Key research themes
1. How do sociopolitical identity and ideological beliefs influence linguistic purism attitudes and behaviors?
This research area investigates the psychological and social foundations underlying linguistic purism, particularly focusing on how individual national identification and political conservatism shape attitudes towards loanwords and purism. Understanding this theme is crucial as it links identity politics and ideological dispositions with language use behaviors, offering measurable pathways through which language purism manifests at both individual and societal levels.
2. What are the sociopolitical and material critiques of viewing language as a commodity in commodification and purism debates?
This theme investigates critical economic and materialist perspectives on the commodification of language, contesting the prevalent discourse that treats language as a tradeable commodity. It challenges the reductionist assumptions in neoliberal language commodification narratives and examines purism through the lens of capitalist fetishism, labor theories, and the limits of purely discursive explanations, thus advancing the political economy approach to linguistic purism.
3. How do language purism movements and standardization projects intersect with social hierarchies and power in multilingual and postcolonial contexts?
This research area focuses on the ethnographic and sociolinguistic processes whereby language purism and standardization practices reflect, reproduce, or contest social inequalities. Especially in postcolonial, multilingual, or minority language settings, purism is entangled with identity affirmation, hegemonic social formations, and linguistic legitimacy, which are crucial for understanding language politics beyond the nation-state framework.