Language Orthodoxy

The established, institutionalized set of beliefs about language itself—the often-unexamined assumptions that language represents reality, that words have fixed meanings, that communication is transparent, that some languages are more advanced than others, that monolingualism is normal, that translation is straightforward, that language is primarily about reference rather than relationship, power, or identity. Language orthodoxy includes commitments: that meaning resides in words rather than use, that dictionaries define rather than record, that some languages are "primitive" while others are "sophisticated," that language is a tool rather than a world. Like all orthodoxies, it provides a framework for understanding language, but it functions as ideology—making particular linguistic assumptions seem universal, obscuring how language actually works (context-dependent, power-laden, identity-constituting), and delegitimizing alternative understandings (indigenous philosophies of language, post-structuralist linguistics, multilingual perspectives). Language orthodoxy determines what counts as "proper" language use, what linguistic practices are "valid," and who counts as "linguistically competent."

Example: "He insisted that words have one true meaning—not because he'd studied linguistics, but because language orthodoxy had made fixed reference feel like common sense. The orthodoxy's power is making a theory of language feel like language itself."

by Dumu The Void March 17, 2026