Language and tradition have long been relegated to the sidelines as scholars have considered the role of politics, science, technology and economics in the making of the modern world. This reading of over two centuries of philosophy, political theory, anthropology, folklore and history argues that new ways of imagining language and representing supposedly premodern people - the poor, labourers, country folk, non-europeans and women - made political and scientific revolutions possible. The connections between language ideologies, privileged linguistic codes, and political concepts and practices shape the diverse ways we perceive ourselves and others. This 2003 book demonstrates that contemporary efforts to make schemes of social inequality based on race, gender, class and nationality seem compelling and legitimate, rely on deeply-rooted ideas about language and tradition. Showing how critics of modernity unwittingly reproduce these foundational fictions, it suggests strategies for challenging the undemocratic influence of these voices of modernity.

Winner of the Sapir Book Prize awarded by the Society for Linguistic Anthropology who cited the authors' success in 'investigating the role of ideologies of language in the shaping of modernity'. In doing so, 'the book brings linguistic anthropology to the forefront of contemporary debates in the hu

‘Their scope is enormous and I can think of no one who has covered the terrain that they have in such breadth and depth … one of the best accounts of language ideology I have encountered.’

Source: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

'… of interest to all scholars …'

Source: Pragmatics

'Bauman and Briggs have written the most fundamental, significant work ever for linguistic anthropologists and probably for all anthropologists with the slightest concern with reflexivity and practice.'

Source: Journal of Linguistic Anthropology