"Secrets Keep You Sick": Metalinguistic Labor in a Drug Treatment Program for Homeless Women  

Oleh:

Carr, E. Summerson

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Language in Society (ada di PROQUEST) vol. 35 no. 5 (Nov. 2006), page 631-653.
Fulltext: 4169533.pdf (2.57MB)

Isi artikel

This article demonstrates how cultural ideologies of language, and the semiotic processes that mobilize them, manifest in contemporary American drug treatment. Drawing from an ethnographic study of an outpatient program in the Midwestern United States, it focuses on therapists' claims about what constitutes “healthy language.” It is argued that these claims both stem from and actively reproduce an “ideology of inner reference,” which presumes that “healthy” language refers to preexisting phenomena, and that the phenomena to which it refers are internal to speakers. By formally discouraging talk that could point outside the parameters of the individual psyche, the treatment program effectively insulates itself from clients' critiques and challenges. A broad attempt is made to elucidate the connection between a language ideology that enjoys wide cultural circulation as well as significant currency in contemporary clinical practice, and a particular political effect called “institutional insulation.”

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