ABSTRACT
I will focus on social meaning as it is involved in evaluation of languages and of what can be said in them, more particularly, with the dialectic between actual and potential ability.
Many address these issues, not least those concerned with literacy and bilingual education, with language policy, the official English movement, and the like. Recent experiences have brought this aspect of social meaning home to me anew. I want to suggest that we are not always entirely frank and consistent. Let me consider three aspects of inequality in turn. Each involves a kind of taking for granted.
