Metalanguage and Ideology in Action: The Making of an English-Speaking Alaska, 1870-1902

This paper analyzes metalanguage in a series of annual reports about Alaska that were made to the U.S. Commissioner of Education from 1870 to 1902 as Protestant missionaries developed Alaska’s first territory-wide school system. A key aspect of the missionaries’ educational endeavor focused on language. Using methods of critical regional discourse analysis, this study examines how discussions of language in general, specific languages, language in use, practices of language education, and goals of language education were used to develop and enact a powerful set of language ideologies that set the stage for significant language shift in the region. It shows how missionary educators thought about the English language’s relationship to broader ideologies, how they viewed the problems associated with non-English languages, and how various agents enacted competing approaches to language that disrupted dominant ideologies that promoted English-only language and literacy practices while suppressing other languages.