ABSTRACT
Belief can be conceived of as ‘the intersubjective mechanism linking cultural scripts, frames, codes, and ideologies with their inferred effects on observable lines of action’. The structural nature of belief within the sociological tradition suggests that people hold on to their beliefs even when confronted with contradictory facts because of the deep-seated nature of these structures. Research focusing on language ideologies has revealed that the primary motivators for many beliefs about language are situated on a status vs. solidarity continuum and are closely tied to notions of belonging. Planets of belief can be seen as the network of connections that is mostly implicit and unconscious in speakers’ minds. The main difference, perhaps, between lexical priming and the triggering of fractal networks in a belief planet is that, during priming, the collocations and connotations that didn’t adhere to the actual utterance get discarded when a phrase activates a group of ideas about the speaker.
