Plenary Abstract: Prof. Dr. Jan Blommaert

A crucial task of contemporary sociolinguistics is to examine the indexical organization not of 'languages' such as English, but of specific, ordered complexes of resources such as registers. This is of crucial importance if we intend to add weight to claims about the importance (or lack thereof) of 'language' in domains such as education, public service and institutions: the arguments we can build usually do not point towards the 'entire' language, but to the societal impact of specific registers within that 'language'. The ontology of register, however, is still relatively unclear, and this lecture seeks to add precision to the exercise. The case I will engage with in order to press this point is 'business English' or 'corporate register'. Corporate register is a sociolinguistic reality at several levels: first, as a widespread complex of sociolinguistic-discursive practices (an 'order of indexicality' organizing discourses in various fields). But second - and in focus here - as an ideological phenomenon revolving around a set of indexical vectors - 'frames' - some of which are widely recognized while some others are less noticed. Corporate register carries at least the following set of indexical vectors: (a) "a language of power" - it indexes voices of power and authority and is an instrument thereof; (b) "political neutrality" - it suggests a level of reality not subject to power struggles and inequality; (c) "epistemic objectivity" - it embodies an outspokenly denotational view of "pure description". The three vectors are practically inconsistent, but ideologically consistent. The combination of these three vectors propels a dynamics of standardization and homogenization, and enables the infinite extension and expansion of corporate register in a vast range of fields of application, including education, poverty reduction and even democracy.

Keywords: sociolinguistics, register, indexicality