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Sociolinguistics and Universalism

Article in Sociolinguistica - International Yearbook of European Sociolinguistics / Internationales Jahrbuch für europäische Soziolinguistik · February 2024
DOI: 10.1515/soci-2023-0016

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Jérémie Bouchard
Sociolinguistics and Universalism
[Link]

Abstract: The discourse on linguistic diversity, relativity and pluralism is currently

dominant in sociolinguistics. By extension, arguments for universalism are cur-
rently unfashionable in the field, particularly within its interpretivist strand. This
paper claims that interpretivist sociolinguistics promotes conflicting, often luke-
warm, and at times antagonistic views on universalism as a core emancipatory
value. In response, the argument is made that appreciating universalism requires
a layered social ontology afforded by critical realism. To build this critique, the
paper first surveys how universalism has been neglected by prominent interpre-
tivist sociolinguists to date. It then provides a conceptual account of critical real-
ism’s layered social ontology and its relation to sociolinguistics. A discussion on
the nature and importance of values in social science and sociolinguistics follows.
Finally, the paper discusses universalism as a core emancipatory value, its critique,
and its relation to sociolinguistics.

Keywords: critical realism, empiricism, interpretivism, universalism, values

1 Introduction
The discourse on linguistic diversity, relativity and pluralism, or what O’Regan
(2021) labels the superdiverse translingual discourse, is currently dominant in
sociolinguistics. Blommaert and Rampton (2012) argue that, especially in the past
thirty years, intensifying globalization processes have reshaped social, cultural
and linguistic diversity around the world, leading to the emergence of super-diver-
sity, or sharped increases in migration patterns and itineraries as well as types of
migrants, phenomena which are said to redefine language and its socially situated
uses. Against this backdrop, arguments for universalism are currently unfashion-

Acknowledgment: I would like to thank my mother, Myriam Morissette, for her love and support,
her tireless work in feminism and secularism in the province of Québec for over forty years, and for
reminding me of the centrality of a universalist perspective in critical social research.

Ph.D. Jérémie Bouchard, Professor, Faculty of Humanities, Hokkai Gakuen University, 4-1-40,
Asahimachi, Toyohira-ku, Sapporo, Japan, 062-8605, bouchardjeremie@[Link],
[Link]
2 Jérémie Bouchard

able in sociolinguistics, particularly within its interpretivist strand. Arguments for

universalism are also unfashionable in the social sciences at large (Collier 2003).
This paper claims that interpretivist sociolinguistics promotes conflicting, often
lukewarm, and at times antagonistic views on universalism as a core emancipa-
tory value, and that appreciating universalism requires a layered social ontology
afforded by critical realism.
To build this critique, the current paper first surveys how universalism has
thus far been misinterpreted and/or neglected by interpretivist sociolinguists. It
then provides a conceptual account of critical realism’s layered social ontology
and its relation to sociolinguistics. Because universalism is conceptualized in this
paper as a core emancipatory value rather than a descriptive tool, a discussion on
the nature and importance of values in sociolinguistics follows. Finally, the paper
ends with a discussion on universalism, its critique, and its necessary relation to
sociolinguistics. This paper adopts a flexible epistemology respectful of all forms
of human diversity, including linguistic and cultural diversity, while advocating
an anti-relativist, anti-empiricist, and universalist viewpoint informed by critical
realism.
Crucial at the onset is a distinction between language universals as a notion
pertaining to linguistic forms (e. g., Hymes) and to linguistic structures in the mind
(e. g., Chomsky) on the one hand, and universalism as a core emancipatory value
on the other. Although Hymes (1974) advocated a relativist view of sociolinguistics,
he also argued for the importance of language universals, and argued that soci-
olinguistics should be “based on a dialectic which requires that both universals
and particulars be taken into account” (Figueroa 1994: 43). Hymes’s commitment to
universals, however, differs from the argument in this paper, which posits univer-
salism as a core emancipatory value in critical social research, including sociolin-
guistics. This argument is partly based on realization that “the point of all science,
indeed all learning and reflection, is to change and develop our understandings
and reduce illusion. This is not just an external and contingent sociological con-
dition of learning but its constitutive force […] Without this universal necessary
condition, none of the particular methodological and ethical norms of science and
learning in general has any point” (Collier 2005: 330).
The argumentation in this paper is also a response to concern regarding the
growing interpretivist tendency in sociolinguistics, characterized here as sympto-
matic of communitarianism, an increasingly dominant ideology in today’s social
sciences. A product of neoliberal ideology, and arguably the ideological opposite of
universalism, communitarianism is hereby understood partly as a cultural stance
in relation to the Self-Other relationship. Further developed later in this paper,
communitarianism is also an ideological stance which reduces people to social cat-
egories, and given relativism’s incommensurability criterion, characterizes them
  Sociolinguistics and Universalism 3

as sole legitimate representatives of these categories. Also noting the dominant

interpretivist, empiricist tendencies in the field, Block (2014, 2022) explores what he
identifies as social class blindness in sociolinguistics. In Block (2014: 8), the author
similarly decries this increasingly marked emphasis on the individual and on iden-
tity recognition in the field, stating that “[t]he embrace of so-called ‘identity politics’
in contemporary society, the rise of neoliberalism and the individualistic culture
that it engendered, and the move in the social sciences and education to poststruc-
turalist epistemological stances, have all been factors which have helped to pre-
cipitate a general loss of interest in social class.” Although multiple definitions of
neoliberalism have been put forth, this paper adopts the definition of neoliberalism
as “a technology of governance that extends and disseminates market values to all
institutions and social activities, and that influences individual conduct by inter-
pellating each member of society as an entrepreneurial self in every sphere of life”
(Del Percio and Flubacher 2017: 4). Block (2022: 56) defines neoliberal individualism
as a particular stance in relation to global capitalism which has engendered

increasing economic inequality on the back of a raft of: (1) high-impact economic measures,
including the reduction of the welfare state, the privatization of state assets and operations
and the deregulation of the financial markets locally and globally; and (2) deep-reaching social
policies, including the prioritization of competition over cooperation, the propagation of the
notion that human nature is greedy and individualistic and the imposition of the market met-
aphor as an organizing principle in a range of contexts in which it was previously unknown.

This paper conceptualizes communitarianism (as introduced above and developed

later in this paper) as a subset of neoliberalism, which is a broader ideological phe-
nomenon. From the perspective of feminism, Heinich (2021) argues that communi-
tarianism’s greatest dangers are (a) the essentialization of social categories and the
related reduction of people to those categories, (b) the abandonment to particulari-
ties and the related denial of what is shared, and (c) the obscuring of the necessary
relationship between nation and citizen in the maintenance and improvement of
democracies. Heinich concludes that these three dangers can lead to (d) the erosion
of a robust and viable critical social science for human emancipation. The argu-
ment developed in this paper is largely the result of parallel concerns regarding
interpretivist sociolinguistics and its ambivalent approach to universalism.
A core assumption behind the above claims, of course, is that sociolinguistics
(as with all branches of the social sciences) possesses not only descriptive potential,
but also explanatory and critical potentials (Bouchard 2022). As Danemark et al.
(2019: 211) point out, this core critical feature of the social sciences becomes evident
“when social scientists not only show that some beliefs are false but also explain
why people believe as they do, and how these ideas have developed. Social criticism
is intrinsic in social science.” Although not every sociolinguist would agree that
4 Jérémie Bouchard

their field is inherently critical, none would justifiably reject the idea that explain-
ing the relationship between language and social realities necessitates sociological
insight. Arguably, this insight can best be understood as the product of attempts by
scholars not only to understand social phenomena but also create a better society.
As such, sociolinguists cannot effectively avoid social critique in their work. The
relationship between sociolinguistic inquiry and social critique becomes even more
evident when looking at common sociolinguistic variables: linguistic and cultural
norms, expectations about successful communication, rules of politeness, context,
gender, ethnicity, religion, socio–economic status, educational level, age, to name
but a few. Evident from this list is that no sociolinguistic variable is natural, unbi-
ased, or devoid of ideological content: all variables (much like values, beliefs, ideas,
and theories, for that matter) remain social constructions emerging from social
contexts marked not by social equality but inequality (Phillips 2002). By extension,
talks of norms, values, and other social phenomena which exclude social critique
overlook an inherent aspect of society and people as sentient, evaluative beings
(Collier 2003; Sayer 2011).
Critical engagement by sociolinguists has thankfully amplified in the past few
decades, largely due to the pioneering works of Labov, Lass, Fishman, Hymes, Sil-
verstein, and Shiffman decades ago, and more recently through important con-
tributions by scholars including Block, Canagarajah, Kramsch, Kubota, Norton,
O’Regan, Pennycook, Phillipson, Skutnabb-Kangas, Tollefson, Zotzmann, and so
many others. However, Williams (1992) argued notably that the most prominent
sociolinguistic analyses have been heavily focused on issues of reflexivity and
interpretation rather than on the material, structural, and ideological origins of
linguistic inequalities. More recently, Block (2014, 2015, 2022), O’Regan (2014, 2021),
and Zotzmann (2017) have echoed and refined Williams’s critique. From a broader
social scientific viewpoint, Sayer (2011: 218–219, emphases mine) notes a similar
problem in the following way: “It’s now common to see it as the job of [critical
social scientists] merely to ‘unsettle’ existing academic ideas rather than provide
critiques of social practices. As a result critique has sometimes become reduced
to little more than skepticism coupled with a concern to be reflexive.” Later on,
the author adds that “unsettling ideas […] is not necessarily progressive; Holocaust
denial is unsettling” (Sayer 2011: 222).
This problematic approach to social critique in sociolinguistics persists largely
because of interpretivism’s (particularly poststructuralism’s) aversion to said grand
narratives and the overblown fear of essentialization (discussed further below), two
postmodernist stances which complicate conceptualizations and analyses of anteced-
ent and enduring structures and discourses of oppression. As Piketty (2022) demon-
strates in his history of (in)equality, (a) different forms of inequality have endured
over centuries, (b) individuals and communities usually experience not single but
  Sociolinguistics and Universalism 5

rather different combinations of inequality, (c) individuals are often left with limited
necessary resources to combat inequality, in part, due to historical amnesia, intel-
lectual nationalism, and the increasing compartmentalization of knowledge, and (d)
collective mobilization is therefore a necessary condition for social change. Over-
coming these challenges, according to the author, requires not only conceptualiza-
tions of antecedent and enduring structures and their effects on people, but also the
implementation of universalist objectives for global social emancipation, a position
clearly contradicting both interpretivism and communitarianism.
That being said, not all of the sociolinguists listed above are associated with
interpretivism or communitarianism, and even if most of them can safely be iden-
tified as interpretivist scholars, they have nevertheless provided rich insight into
the material, structural, and ideological origins of social and linguistic phenomena,
including linguistic inequalities. In their own ways (although not always success-
fully), they have also constructed their analyses with consideration for the complex
relationship between structure, culture, and agency. As such, the critique of inter-
pretivist sociolinguistics in this paper is also cognizant of the possibility that adher-
ence to a particular social theory or paradigm might not determine argumentation
and/or analysis. Nevertheless, it stresses that (a) theory, methodology, and analysis
must be aligned in the production of good sociolinguistic work, and (b) more active
engagement by sociolinguists with social theory is consequently necessary to over-
come enduring empiricist tendencies in the field.

2 Interpretivism and its critique

Interpretivism is a philosophical perspective which prioritizes the interpretation of
people’s beliefs about society and social phenomena. It extends the Kuhnian relativ-
ist notion of scientific truth as the result of consensus among scientists rather than
as the outcome of judgmental rationalism. Interpretivism assumes that reality can
best be understood not through the study of social phenomena as objective facts
(since those are seen as beyond the reach of human beings) but rather through the
perspectives of the individuals who experience these phenomena. Prominent inter-
pretivist perspectives include ethnomethodology, symbolic interactionism, social
constructivism, postmodernism, poststructuralism, and to some extent Giddens’
structuration theory. Interpretivism has been noted as a dominant strand in soci-
olinguistics (Block 2014, 2015, 2022; Bouchard 2021, 2022, 2023; O’Regan 2014, 2021;
Sealey and Carter 2004; Zotzmann, 2017), with Woolard (2008) pointing out that
much of recent sociolinguistic research has been inspired by cultural anthropology,
particularly its marked interpretivist, phenomenologist strand.
6 Jérémie Bouchard

Although often unacknowledged by its adherents, interpretivism is para-

doxically marked by a positivist, neoliberalist overemphasis on rational actors
actively shaping their identities by choosing from a range of cultural and linguistic
resources, as in market economy structures (O’Regan 2014, 2021). Some interpre-
tivists reach the opposite conclusion that identity markers (e. g., culture, religion,
language) are inherent to the individual rather than distinct from the individual
(which would be a necessary condition for the rational actor model in interpre-
tivism). This paradoxical stance then leads to determinist understandings of the
influence of culture on people, thus complicating the task of explaining why and
how people are able to choose between cultural reproduction, resistance, or trans-
formation. Williams (1992) also notes a problematic penchant toward the consen-
sus model in interpretivist sociolinguistics, noting a common lack of consideration
for conflict and class struggle over limited symbolic and economic resources as
important causal mechanisms (Block 2014, 2015). In other words, although inter-
pretivism projects itself as a champion of ‘the view from below’, its various con-
ceptualizations of human agency in relation to structure and culture remain ill-de-
veloped.
Many reasons can explain this enduring shortcoming, although one is perhaps
more evident: the twin notion commonly reiterated by interpretivist sociolinguists
that (a) focusing on structural and material forces conjures echoes of grand narra-
tives à la Marxism (e. g., Lin and Luk 2002; Pennycook 2001), and that (b) instead
a focus on the fluid and negotiated discursive activities of people in context is the
main goal of sociolinguistic research, critical or otherwise (e. g., Shohamy 2006).
By emphasizing local realities, notably participants’ interpretations of their lived
experiences, and by tentatively relating these interpretations to broader structural
and cultural forces, interpretivist scholars end up providing limited, underdevel-
oped conceptual accounts of the dialectical causal influence between structure,
culture, and agency as distinct and emergent strata of the social realm.
Extending this interpretivist perspective further, poststructuralism advo-
cates a type of social critique whereby people are inherently agentive and can
freely self–style, or construct identities tailored to perceived individual needs and
desires (e. g., Kramsch 2012, 2015). Zotzmann and Vassilev (2020: 310) note similar
problems in the works of poststructuralist social scientists who, according to the
authors, “largely ignore non-ideational elements outside of culture and discourse
and thus play into the hands of populists who have an interest in diverting atten-
tion away from structures by celebrating the rich and wealthy as ‘winners’ and
the poor as deserving their own plight in an allegedly fair economic competition.”
In response, critical realism (discussed further below) posits that identities, even
if fluid, multiple, largely discursively constructed, and historically contingent, are
nevertheless real phenomena emergent from non-discursive phenomena includ-
  Sociolinguistics and Universalism 7

ing the existence of a body, a thinking brain, and a material and economic context
with which this body can interact, fulfil basic physiological needs, and from which
processes including cognition and emotionality emerge. O’Regan (2021: 182–183)
adopts a Marxist standpoint to argue that what therefore needs to be addressed
more explicitly in sociolinguistic research are the antecedent and enduring ele-
ments in the data, or “how [and why] in the midst of evident superdiverse translin-
gual practices and hybridized postcolonial varieties the dominant global hegem-
ony of English in its standard form persists.” Similarly, Block (2014) and Fraser
(2003) argue for the need to understand identities as linked to the material basis
of human existence. In sum, people can, to some extent, choose and shape their
various identities, although this ‘freedom’ is considerably constrained by the
nature of their bodies, the material world they are part of, and the social facts
which are most often beyond their ability to change, influence, avoid, or even
understand.
The theoretical, methodological, and analytical implications for sociolinguists
are considerable. Martinez Dy et al. (2020: 149) point out that “although explor-
ing identity can provide insight into how people perceive, make sense of and cope
with particular circumstances, it cannot speak decisively about how structural
components of those circumstances may be determined by the wider social field.”
Clegg (2020: 164) notes similar implications for social research in the following way:
“Notions of identity are insufficient to the analytical task of providing accounts
of the contextual conditions and structural components that engender (or inhibit)
them.” In light of this, identity-based sociolinguistic research, which occupies a
considerable portion of current interpretivist sociolinguistics (Block 2022), should
arguably be less focused on issues including self-identification, interpretation of
lived experiences, and expressions of beliefs by research participants, and be more
invested in understanding what Block (2022: 124) identifies as “deep-level social
factors, along with the institutions that they engender.” In other words, identi-
ty-based sociolinguistic research should be more invested in unpacking identity
work as one of the multiple outcomes of the contingent and necessary relationship
between agency, structure, and culture in the ongoing production of social life. This
critical realist alternative to interpretivism in sociolinguistics also redefines iden-
tity not as an exclusively subjective and discursive process but rather as enabled
and constrained by the distinct and emergent powers of social networks, notably
through the imposition and acceptance of norms (Williams 1992) as emergent phe-
nomena distinct from situated human interaction.
8 Jérémie Bouchard

3 Universalism in interpretivist sociolinguistics

Critical social inquiry is, arguably, most solidly grounded in the principle that critical
projects require the development of a common will rather than the mere accommo-
dation of local interests (Mingers 2014). For social inequality not to be recalcitrant
or become permanent, action towards social change must attack and undo the sys-
temic properties of social inequality, and for that, widespread mobilization is nec-
essary. The struggle for the protection and expansion of linguistic minority rights
within a nation-state, for example, is usually documented as lengthy, complex,
often contradictory, and too often frustrating and uncertain (Williams 1992), often
leaving individuals and small communities with limited resources and capacities
to effect substantial change on their own. By overemphasizing situated linguistic
experience and people’s interpretations of their lived experiences, however, inter-
pretivist sociolinguistics can only provide an empiricist epistemology somewhat
ill-suited to the necessary analysis of the structure-culture-agency relationship
responsible for the emergence of systemic oppression, including linguistic inequal-
ities and the death of languages.
By extension, the marked emphasis on diversity and particularities in current
interpretivist sociolinguistics has led to a general neglect of universalism as a said
outmoded heritage of the Enlightenment. More radical applications of interpretiv-
ist principles, notably by poststructuralist sociolinguists, has led to the emergence
of an anti-universalist position (e. g., Garcia, Flores, and Spotti 2017; Heller 2001,
2007, 2011; Kramsch 1998, 2012, 2015; Norton 2000; Norton and De Costa 2018; Penny-
cook 2001, 2013; Shohamy 2006). Explicitly rejecting the possibility for universalist
argumentation, Albury (2016: 291) adopts critical and poststructuralist approaches
which, according to the author, are said to “decentralise knowledge authority,
question universal truths, and seek out alternate epistemological biases that exist
within language communities themselves.” This position borrows from Canaga-
rajah (2004), who invites sociolinguists to localize knowledge in language policy
research and practice.
To further understand this dominant empiricist, anti-universalist voice in the
field, it is worth exploring how language is commonly conceptualized by recent
sociolinguists, particularly in their shared rejection of the intransitive aspects of
language, or langue in a Saussurean sense. Makoni and Pennycook (2006: 2), for
example, argue that “languages do not exist as real entities in the world and neither
do they emerge from or represent real environments; they are, by contrast, the
inventions of social, cultural and political movements.” These sociocultural move-
ments are understood by the authors and by Heller (2007) as coinciding with the
emergence of nationalist ideologies in eighteenth century Europe. Similarly, Jør-
gensen et al. (2011) reject the ontological properties of languages, defining them as
  Sociolinguistics and Universalism 9

ideological constructs largely unrelated to situated language use. Blommaert and

Rampton (2012) agree by claiming that the super-diversity discourse has helped
denaturalize the notion that there are distinct languages, and that each of these
languages is bounded, pure, and shaped by clear phonetic, lexical, and syntactic
structures. Methodologically, the authors recommend a focus on situated interac-
tion, because it is said to reveal the intense variability of individual linguistic fea-
tures in relation to social and cultural influences. A conceptual understanding of
the causal relationship between social and cultural influences and situated inter-
action, however, is unfortunately not made explicit in the authors’ work. Similarly,
Lin and Luk (2002: 121) emphasize the importance of the empirical in the context of
critical sociolinguistics, arguing that

critical postmodernist perspectives emphasize situated studies of concrete, local, sociohistori-

cal contexts and lived experiences, based on which situated, local, critical projects can be con-
ceptualized and pursued by the local participants. While rejecting grand narratives and grand
projects of universal emancipation which characterize some versions of modernist critical
theory, critical postmodernism, nevertheless, does not reduce to radical relativism, and does
not lose sight of the concrete struggles of local social actors situated in specific sociohistorical
contexts.

Two problems can be noted in this statement. Firstly, although the said concern
for “the concrete struggles of local social actors situated in specific sociohistori-
cal contexts” in critical postmodernist sociolinguistics suggests that both agentive
and structural phenomena are indeed important foci of inquiry, what is missing
from such claim is a clear conceptual account of the structure-culture-agency rela-
tionship grounded in a robust social theory. This necessary conceptual account is
undermined by the common aversion among postmodernists (particularly post-
structuralists) toward the very notion of social structure as consequential ontolog-
ical entity on the one hand, and by a fondness for decentring human agency at
the profit of all-powerful (and oddly authorless) discourses on the other (Sealey
and Carter 2004). Secondly, it is difficult to understand how any social critique is
possible without the development of ought to statements (i. e., the target of critique
in the grand narrative argument), themselves rooted in universal potentials (e. g.,
human emancipation, flourishing) which have yet to materialize. Understanding
the common overemphasis on parole at the detriment of langue in sociolinguistics
is, in short, helpful to the critique in this paper about the general neglect of uni-
versalism in the field, because these two problems are arguably the products of
empiricism, itself a driving philosophical force behind interpretivism.
That being said, universalism is not entirely external to sociolinguistic schol-
arship. Despite his clear penchant towards particularities and his weakness for a
Kuhnian scientific viewpoint, Hymes (1974) advocated the need for liberté, égalité,
10 Jérémie Bouchard

and fraternité in sociolinguistics. Labovian sociolinguistics has also demonstrated

occasional commitment to universalist principles. In intercultural communica-
tive competence research, Kim (2001) discusses a complex developmental process
unfolding throughout long-term engagement in intercultural communication
involving both individualization and universalization. This process, according to
Kim, allows the intercultural communicator to develop the ability to make appro-
priate choices in context rather than revert to the norms and habitus of a particu-
lar cultural community. Perhaps more explicitly universalist is the work of Skut-
nabb-Kangas and Phillipson (1994) on linguistic rights. As the authors explain, “the
ecology-of-language paradigm involves building on linguistic diversity worldwide,
promoting multilingualism and foreign language learning, and granting linguistic
human rights to speakers of all languages” (Skutnabb-Kangas and Phillipson 1994:
206).
Despite some degree of recognition by some sociolinguists of universalism as
a core emancipatory value, however, the dominant presence of interpretivism in
the field makes such recognition tentative at best. For sociolinguists to explain lan-
guage use in terms of the structure-culture-agency interaction, and by extension, to
tackle thorny ethical issues embedded in their various objects of inquiry, a layered
social ontology becomes necessary.

4 Critical realism’s layered social ontology

The social world and our varied understandings of it can be understood as layered
in different ways. For example, critical realists distinguish between (a) episte-
mology (people’s understandings of reality) and ontology (the reality as it exists
independently of people’s understandings of it), (b) the transitive layer (people’s
constantly changing ideas and beliefs about the world) and the intransitive layer
(social facts, events, and phenomena which can only be partly known by people),
and between (c) structure, culture, and agency. Together, these differently layered
viewpoints (ontological realism) define critical realism as a non-conflationary phi-
losophy for the natural and the social sciences which recognizes that no one has
direct and unmediated access to reality (epistemic relativism), while specifying that
human beings do not merely have experiences or hold beliefs or feelings in their
minds, but rather hold beliefs about, feelings towards, and have experiences of
things (Collier 2003). Consequently, values, beliefs and the likes are understood from
a critical realist perspective as oriented towards objective reality, thus as having a
basis upon which to be judged as being better or worse (judgmental rationalism).
Critical realism thus becomes a relational philosophy of science focused on how dif-
  Sociolinguistics and Universalism 11

ferent layers, and how distinct and emergent objects and phenomena within each
layer, interact causally to produce the observable.
The argument about universalism in sociolinguistics in this paper specifically
relies on the distinction between three layers of reality: the empirical, the actual, and
the real. Roy Bhaskar (1994, 2008), a central figure in critical realism, explains that
the empirical includes whatever human beings can perceive through the sense and/
or through data gathering instruments. For sociolinguists, empirical evidence can be
apprehended through surveys, interviews, and field notes, for example. The actual
refers to all the facts which exist, as opposed to the facts which could have existed
but did not, due to the contingent and radically open nature of the social world. For
sociolinguists, this can mean all currently existing varieties of English around the
world, whether or not any individual sociolinguist is able to hear them or study
them empirically. Finally, the real contains everything: the empirical, the actual, and
more importantly, underlying generative mechanisms (UGMs), or powerful social
influences (both active and dormant) people might not be able to perceive through
the senses, but are nevertheless aware of because of their potential causal effects
on empirical phenomena. At the macro-social level, UGMs might include capitalism,
social class struggle, credentialism, education’s reproductive and transformative
potentials, social norms, neoliberalism, racism, sexism, linguicism, etc. At the local
level, UGMs might include people’s motivations, reasons, beliefs, hopes, fears, etc.
Conceptualizing UGMs requires initial recognition that their causal role must be
necessary for the emergence of empirical phenomena to be possible. However, due
to the radically open nature of the social realm, UGMs are not understood as mech-
anistic causal forces determining empirical phenomena, but rather as either man-
ifested or dormant tendencies, depending on their interaction with human agency
and other UGMs in context and over time. Furthermore, the distinction between the
empirical, the actual, and the real is not scalar but rather ontological, in that these
different layers and the phenomena within them possess distinct and emergent
properties and powers, making them irreducible to each other.
As a core emancipatory value rather than a tool to describe empirical reality,
universalism conjures the possibility of a reality which has yet to materialize. It
can therefore only be conceptualized and studied through a necessary process of
abstraction. As a value and potentially powerful source of social influence, univer-
salism must consequently be conceptualized as a UGMs situated at the level of the
real, with distinct and emergent properties and powers. The core argument in this
paper is therefore centred on the crucial underlying conceptual aspects of a crit-
ical approach to the study of language in its social context, and helps clarify why
debates between the universalists and the interpretivists often unfold at cross-pur-
poses: while the universalists argue with reference to the real, the interpretivists
remain focused on the empirical.
12 Jérémie Bouchard

The universalist view advocated in this paper is ontologically layered also in

its distinction between language as a cultural resource on the one hand and lan-
guage as a situated practice on the other (Bouchard 2018). This view borrows from
the Saussurean distinction between the synchronic and diachronic aspects of lan-
guage, and recognizes that if, as Makoni and Pennycook (2006: 22) suggest, sociolin-
guistics should be principally aimed at understanding “the relationships between
what people believe about their language (or other people’s languages), the situated
forms of talk they deploy, and the material effects – social, economic, environmen-
tal – of such views and use”, then contra the authors’ own suggestion to disinvent
language(s), sociolinguists must instead conceptualize languages such as Japanese,
English, or French as real entities, as relatively discrete linguistic systems, and as
antecedent and enduring cultural resources with constraining and enabling poten-
tials, distinct from situated communication. To understand why people speak or
act the way they do, it is necessary to go beyond their interpretations of their lived
experiences, and understand both people and their context as layered phenomena
made up of elements (including language) each with their own distinct and emer-
gent properties and powers.
This layered view also recognizes that standard language varieties are partly
political entities (e. g., the notion of language rooted in 18th century nation-state
ideology), and real entities of consequence to situated language use, to language
pedagogy around the world, and to the emergence of other, non-standard lan-
guage varieties. Viewed from this layered perspective, language can be studied
and explained as products of the complex and ongoing interaction between social
and linguistic processes unfolding within and beyond situated interaction (i. e., the
interaction between structure, culture, and agency). Against postmodernist cri-
tique, this layered viewpoint therefore recognizes that (a) language standardiza-
tion is not exclusively a political process but also an important aspect of humans’
linguistically and culturally mediated engagement with the world, (b) people have
always, and will always, attempt to establish rules, norms, and ways of being and
doing perceived as appropriate by the majority, in part to ensure mutual intelli-
gibility and share experiences, and (c) even if people’s situated linguistic/cultural
activities may not reflect or reproduce antecedent and enduring rules and norms,
the latter nevertheless serve as important constraining and enabling influences
agents cannot simply bracket off or do without. This layered view of language,
communication, context, and people therefore avoids reducing complex linguistic
phenomena to the local, by recognizing the consequential relationship between the
synchronic and diachronic aspects of language as a human activity in the ongoing
production of social life. In the next section, the role of values in the social sciences
is explored through a similarly layered perspective.
  Sociolinguistics and Universalism 13

5 W
 hat are values, and why should
sociolinguists be concerned?
Universalism has so far been identified in this paper as a core emancipatory value
rather than as a descriptive tool. This label raises broader questions regarding the
role of values in social research, thus reviving the long-standing debate regarding
the fact-value dichotomy in the social and natural sciences. This section makes the
anti-relativist argument that the long-standing fact-value dichotomy is problem-
atic, a position which draws from Ash’s (2022: 29) point that “the postulation of an
unbridgeable divide between facts and values, which supports the assertion that
moral arguments are illegitimate, leads to moral relativism and moral scepticism
and so rejects universality.”
In his volume Why things matter to people, Andrew Sayer (2011) asserts the
centrality of evaluation, thus of values to social research, arguing that, because the
world is radically open, and because people are sentient beings both capable of
numerous actions and vulnerable to various social, cultural, and material forces,
their relation to the world is one of concern, making them inherently evaluative
beings. As the author argues, “there is nothing necessarily ‘idealist’ about ethics;
it’s about how people live together, and how they might achieve well-being” (Sayer
2011: 249). Values and ethics, however, remain conceptual entities, and so it becomes
useful from an explanatory standpoint to conceptualize them as potential UGMs at
the level of the real, with potential causal effects on human discourse and action
(Ash 2022). Therefore, understanding people’s discourses/actions requires a move-
ment away from instrumental rationality, which largely denies the importance of
values as causes, towards recognition of the role of values as important UGMs.
Sayer (2011: 25–26) defines values not as subjective or private phenomena exclu-
sively, but rather as “sedimented valuations that have become attitudes or disposi-
tions, which we come to regard as justified. They merge into emotional dispositions
and inform the evaluations we make of particular things, as part of our conceptual
and affective apparatus.” Values, in this sense, are very much like theories or other
conceptualizations of objective reality which can be subjected to critical scrutiny.
On the issue of human well-being, Sayer (2011: 134) argues that “subjective feelings
seem to be about things which are objective in the sense of independent of them.
It is precisely because of this independence that we can sometimes realize that
our evaluations of our situation have been mistaken […] If well-being were merely
subjective, then our views of it would be infallible.” The author further notes that
people very often contest the legitimacy and rationality behind values, precisely
because they are social beings who must co-exist with others, and because living
by values not broadly supported by the community is considerably difficult. Values
14 Jérémie Bouchard

have, in this sense, a dialectical relationship with objective reality, which not only
makes them consequential variables in social research, but also makes it possible
for people to unpack and critique them on rational grounds. Contra relativism, this
critical realist principle allows people to judge, for example, emancipatory values
as superior to neo-fascist values, based on how each set of values fares in rela-
tion to the larger project of human survival, well-being, and flourishing as states of
being which can exist regardless of whether they are noticed and/or understood by
people (Sayer 2011).
This critical realist understanding of values as oriented towards objective
reality further suggests that people’s ability to evaluate things is part of their
broader arsenal of practical reasoning skills, that evaluation and reasoning are
crucial features of people’s ongoing and fallible attempts to understand the world.
Furthermore, values are not neatly distinguishable from institutional, structural,
and material facts of social life, because the latter can serve as repositories for
values, solidifying them and institutionalizing them. This lends further support
for the critical realist arguments that (a) values can (and often do) emerge from
social contexts marked by inequality, and that consequently (b) values should be
subjected to critical scrutiny.
Sociolinguists, in other words, should not shy away from dealing with values
(such as universalism) and their relationship to sociolinguistic research out of
fear to impose their own value-judgment (see Crotty [1998] for an example of
such rationale, and Mayer [1995] for a discussion on the limits of such rationale).
As UGMs with the potential to legitimize power structures, and as essential to the
relationship between humans and the world, values cannot be entirely reduced to
subjective experiences, or to mere pawns in the larger game of power and domi-
nation. Although the holding of values is universal, and judgmental activities are
observable across contexts, the study of values in context involves accounting for
the relationship between values as cultural resources, situated agentive discourses/
actions, and material and/or structural constraints and enablements over time.
Here, a distinction between contingent and necessary judgment is called for. A
judgment is contingent when it depends on something else to be true, such as the
context in which the judgment is made, or the cultural and socioeconomic back-
ground of the person who makes the judgment. A necessary judgment, however,
does not depend on these factors to be true, and so can be deemed as having a uni-
versal quality. Tolerance provides a good example, as one cannot be tolerant of an
intolerant culture (e. g., neo-Nazi culture). Tolerance, in this sense, is not a relativist
but rather a universalist value because the claim for tolerance can only be justified
as a value which motivates people to protect and respect everyone’s well-being and
rights to flourish. Judgments can also be subjective in the sense that they can reflect
the leanings or tastes of the person who voices these judgments, whereas objective
  Sociolinguistics and Universalism 15

judgments are about a reality which exist independently of anyone’s capacity to

understand or evaluate. Whereas it is impossible for people to be wrong about their
feelings towards a work of art, for example, they can be wrong about the causes of
language-based social inequalities and how these must be overcome.
The universalist notion of value developed in this section rejects the particu-
larist, or relativist, ideas that there is no such thing as a universalist ethics, or that
ethics can be reduced to a question of feelings and preferences, depending on one’s
cultural adherence(s) (e. g., Pennycook 2006). Instead, judgments regarding some-
thing being oppressive or an attack on one’s human rights are judgments about the
perceived violation of a real, intransitive principle which relates to what a person
is and to what human emancipation and flourishing involve. It is therefore possible
to make the claim, although fallible and debatable, that some judgments are better
(or perhaps less wrong) than others (Phillips 2002; Sayer 2011). Tilley (2000: 527)
explains that fallibility

does not support relativism, for it does not imply that the validity of which we cannot be abso-
lutely certain is confined to just one or a few cultures. To put this another way, universalism
is about the scope of a moral principle’s validity; it is not about the certainty that attends (or
does not attend) moral principles. Thus, to show that certainty is impossible is not to refute
universalism. (Tilley 2000: 527)

With the above summary of (a) interpretivist sociolinguistics and its neglect of uni-
versalism, (b) critical realism’s sociologically layered viewpoint, and (c) values as
important elements in social research, this paper ends by exploring the necessary
relationship between universalism as a core emancipatory value and sociolinguis-
tics as a critical form of social inquiry.

6 Universalism and its critique

Tilley (2000) defines universalism as the notion that some moral judgments are
universally valid in that they are valid for everyone regardless of their cultural
association. Universalism can also be understood as an ideology which prioritizes
the common good, understood here as a value located at a higher level of abstrac-
tion than diversity (the latter being an undeniable empirical phenomenon), thus
of higher importance to the fulfilment of emancipatory projects. Examples of the
common good include people’s rights
(1) to live life to the end,
(2) to have access to food and shelter,
(3) to have equal access to healthcare, education and work,
16 Jérémie Bouchard

(4) to move freely from place to place,

(5) not to be discriminated against (i. e., to be treated fairly and respectfully),
(6) not to suffer verbal or physical violence,
(7) to receive protection from their government,
(8) to freely think about their own conception of the good and use critical thought
to lead their lives,
(9) to make political choices, and enjoy free speech and free association, and
(10) to use and access information in their first language.

As fallible social constructions, these principles should be subjected to ongoing

debate and revision, as they usually are.
Defending the common good is a core responsibility all citizens within demo-
cratic nation-states should fulfil to the best of their abilities, and many of them do
so by electing representatives who (hopefully) defend their interests. The humanis-
tic project of protecting the common good thus requires ideals and shared values.
As Lawson (1999: 47) explains, “the possibility of human freedom pre-supposes the
existence of shared human objectives, i. e., real interests and motives, ultimately
rooted in common needs and capabilities.” This point serves as another principal
justification for the argument in this paper about the need to integrate universal-
ism as a core emancipatory value in sociolinguistics.
Drawing from Ash (2022), two arguments supporting the view that moral-
ity is universal can be noted: (1) the transcendental argument developed earlier
that value statements are possible because they are all about a reality (or reali-
ties) which exist(s) independently of lived experiences, and (2) the argument
that a value is universal if it is widely agreed upon by people of different cul-
tures, with the UNESCO 2001 Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity serving
as one possible embodiment of universalist principles. From the angle of social
research specifically, Hartwig (2007) states that, in critical realism, universalism
is not related to things like rules or laws, but rather to universal needs, potentials,
rights, and freedoms. Located at the level of the real, these universal needs, poten-
tials, rights, and freedoms surface at the empirical level in mediated and situated
forms.
Within critical realism, moral judgments can potentially be universalizable,
although this process is inherently conceptual. Again, universalism exists at the
level of the real, although it manifests itself in historically-specific ways, often
through the emergence and application of community norms. This critical realist
view is not aligned with positivism and the promotion of universal research
methods and rigid scientific guidelines; rather, it advocates methodological plu-
ralism to account for how universalism as a core emancipatory value emerges in
various socio-cultural contexts.
  Sociolinguistics and Universalism 17

Critiques of universalism have largely been formulated within post-colo-

nial theory, developed by scholars including Edward W. Said, Homi K. Bhabha,
and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, who took much inspiration from Foucault’s
work on discourse and power. Post-colonial theory, which explicitly questions,
or deconstructs, the heritage of colonial rule and its impact on colonized and
minoritized communities around the world, not only challenges assumptions
about existing power structures, its principal objective is to amplify and val-
orise minoritized viewpoints. The notion of liminality (Bhabha 1994), central to
post-colonial theory, describes the threshold or boundary between cultures as a
fluid and constantly shifting space where much of cultural meaning is created,
revealing cultural indeterminacy and hybridity not only as important empirical
processes but also as creating the necessary conditions for subversion and cul-
tural change. Because it considers both transitive and intransitive phenomena as
crucial elements in social research, critical realism integrates both the notion of
universalism as core emancipatory value located at the level of the real, and the
post-colonialist notion of cultural and linguistic boundaries as fluid and constantly
shifting.
There are four main criticisms targeted at universalism: divergences from
empirical facts, ethnocentrism, domination and uniformization. Firstly, univer-
salism is accused of failing to reflect complex lived experiences. In response, one
must distinguish between universalism as a value and how universalism has been
discussed by specific people/groups throughout history. Although universalism can
be understood at an abstract level, clearly not everyone agrees with how it has
been talked about over the centuries. More importantly, however, universalism is
a value, and as a value its aim is to provide a vision of a society which has yet to
materialize rather than describe empirical reality. As such, universalism should
serve as a valuable point of reference in the humanistic project of ensuring that all
people, as citizens of nations, and regardless of their appearances or linguistic and/
or cultural allegiances, enjoy access to the common good.
Secondly, universalism, as an epistemology largely developed in the West, is
accused of ethnocentrism (see Ndhlovu 2017; Albury 2016, for examples of such
critique in sociolinguistics). In response, one must first identify the claim that eth-
nocentrism is wrong and immoral as a universalist statement itself. One must also
note a fundamental difference between ethnocentrism and universalism:

The ethnocentric person uncritically accepts the prevailing views of his culture and sees
cultures with contrary views as ignorant or backward. The universalist, on the other hand,
thinks merely that some moral standards apply to all cultures. He is not bound to the idea that
these universal standards, whatever they are, dovetail with the accepted views of his culture.
Perhaps he is sceptical of those views (Tilley 2000: 529, emphasis original).
18 Jérémie Bouchard

More importantly, critiques of universalism as ethnocentric are not entirely justi-

fied. De Varennes (2006) notes that numerous Asian and Middle-Eastern writings
and traditions also advocate elements similar to those found in the human rights
discourse of the U.N., notably the notions of a shared sense of justice and humanity.
This leads the author to conclude that “many of these international standards are
capable of taking into account cultural and societal particularities while not affect-
ing their universal application” (De Varennes 2006: 67–68). Collier (2003: 53) goes
further by stating that many European ideas have successfully traversed cultural
boundaries, and that while some of these ideas have found devoted supporters in
non-European cultures, some have also been vehemently criticized in Europe.
Thirdly, universalism is criticized for advocating the perspectives of the domi-
nant over the dominated. Although ample evidence justifies this critique, it is mis-
taken to conclude that values coming from western contexts are de facto tools of
western domination.
Fourthly, universalism is said to promulgate a uniformization of society. Here
again, the purpose of universalism as an emancipatory value is misunderstood.
Contra Bell, Nathan, and Peleg (2001), universalism is not a modern version of the
obsolete Tower of Babel analogy inviting a homogenization of society to ensure
peace. Rather, universalism is aimed at emphasizing what human beings share at
a higher, more abstract level. As a normative entity, universalism promulgates the
idea that regardless of one’s origins, age, gender, skin colour, sexual orientation, lin-
guistic identity, etc., all humans should have access to the common good. In short,
universalism does not attack diversity at all: it attacks the denial and/or curtailing
of citizens’ rights on the basis of specific identity markers or affiliations.
At a more conceptual level, of course, it is also crucial to remember that differ-
ence presupposes similarity. As Sayer (2011: 99–100) points out, “there is no point in
attaching significance to the differences between things which are radically differ-
ent, such as epistemology and potatoes […] our interests in difference and similar-
ity, or particularism and universalism, are dialectically related.” As such, whenever
sociolinguists make statements about difference, they are simultaneously making
statements about lived human experiences (potentially) understandable at a uni-
versal level.
To further understand universalism, it is useful to consider communitarianism,
its ideological opposite. Communitarianism presents itself at the surface level as a
celebration of diversity and pluralism, yet at a deeper level, it remains a form of
conservatism (Williams 1992) and even absolutism (Heinich 2021). Communitarian-
ism begins by reducing people to social categories based on language, culture, race,
ethnicity, sex, gender, sexual orientation, religion, age, and so forth. By emphasizing
differences over similarities, it divides people into increasingly granular identity
categories from which it becomes difficult to extricate oneself. This is because com-
  Sociolinguistics and Universalism 19

munitarianism also characterizes members of specific linguistic/cultural communi-

ties as the latter’s sole legitimate representatives (given relativism’s incommensu-
rability criterion). It further constrains people by labelling them as either dominant
or dominated (never both or neither), and in the process, galvanizing ideological
tensions between communities.
Communitarianism poses considerable difficulties for the development of
a robust and constructive sociolinguistic critique, for as Poster (1989: 48) argues,
“if the intellectual is proscribed from theorizing the totality, consigned instead to
the boundaries of local institutions, then political protest, it would appear, must
also remain confined to individual issues, local affairs, interest-group pressures.
General social transformation has apparently been abandoned in favour of a guer-
rilla warfare.” Communitarianism, in this sense, makes tribalization the inevita-
ble result of differentiated identity creation and expression. Emergent from this
process is an ongoing competition between increasingly divided identity groups
for power and limited resources, leading to separatism, differentialism, and the
growing hierarchization of victimhood through culpabilization and victimization.
Pilgrim (2023: 253) makes a parallel argument, stating that “identity politics fit hand
in glove with neoliberalism, with its atomizing individualism, and they are preoc-
cupied with personal victimhood at the expense of social solidarity.”
As a value and fallible human perspective, universalism aims to transcend
communitarianism. Although universalism appreciates the undeniable empirical
reality of diversity, it is not blinded by it. Universalism moves beyond difference by
highlighting what binds people together as humans. It emerges out of recognition
of the terrible reality of human oppression as a shared human experience, and
conceptualizes different forms of social inequality as systems to be dismantled and
replaced through collective engagement and sustained action, rather than through
increasing social differentiation and self-identification. As with social critique
and the elucidation of objective knowledge, universalism is both a value which is
impossible to fully achieve or live up to, yet also an essential part of any critical and
emancipatory project requiring sustained collective commitment.

7 Universalism and sociolinguistics

In practice, universalism has relevance to sociolinguistic work from a variety of
angles. In terms of intercultural communication education, for example, a univer-
salist understanding, resulting from the adoption of a layered sociological view-
point, allows language learners to tackle a range of important conceptual and
practical questions including What are ethnocentrism and ethnorelativism? What
20 Jérémie Bouchard

is culture shock, and what are its different stages? What is prejudice, and what are
its different stages? What prejudices do I have towards the language I am learning?
Does the language I am learning constitute a threat to my first language and culture?
How are intercultural communication and critical thinking related? Why is a focus
on cultural differences important? Why is a focus on cultural similarities important?
How are sexism, racism, and linguicism related, and how are they different? What is
freedom of expression, and how can we protect it? What is the relationship between
citizens and nation, and what is the role of democracy? What are citizens’ rights and
responsibilities? What are examples of universally shared values? What is the rela-
tionship between linguistic rights, democracy, and universalism?
Universalism can also facilitate the task of protecting linguistic minority
rights, for example, by introducing broader philosophical and practical questions
related to the rights and responsibilities of citizens in relation to nation-states,
beyond surface appreciation for and documentation of linguistic diversity. Impor-
tant questions might include What are inclusive values in relation to language,
language use, and multilingualism? How do linguistic minorities perceive and inter-
act with the dominant language in a country, and how do they understand their
own linguistic rights as citizens of nations? How can a minority language gain
greater social, cultural, economic, and political importance within and beyond the
nation? How is linguistic inequality related to other forms of inequalities, and how
do members of linguistic minority groups experience multiple forms of oppression?
How can efforts towards protecting minority language and linguistic rights over-
come the paralyzing effects of neoliberalist ideology and counter outdated nation-
state ideologies?
All these questions considerably broaden the scope of sociolinguistic inquiry,
beyond the empiricist perspectives offered by interpretivism and communitarian-
ism. They can be successfully dealt with through an understanding of universal-
ism as an emancipatory value opposed to all forms of social oppression. For this
epistemological shift to be possible within sociolinguistics, scholars should adopt a
layered sociological perspective, such as that offered by critical realism, to concep-
tualize the variables and conceptual elements in their studies as complex outcomes
of the structure-culture-agency relationship in a contingent social world.

8 Conclusion
The argument in this paper has been in part a response to Hymes’s (1984: 41) sugges-
tion that “sociolinguists should address the question of whether or not there is any-
thing more to their field than a common interest in diversity of language and in its
  Sociolinguistics and Universalism 21

social foundations and concomitants.” It has argued from an anti-foundationalist,

anti-empiricist perspective that the neglect of universalism in interpretivist socio-
linguistics is detrimental to the field, for as the applied linguist Christopher Brumfit
(1997: 92) points out, “any concern to redress linguistic inequalities demands some
sense of universalities, for the very concept ‘inequality’ makes claims about an indi-
visible concept ‘equality’.”
To achieve a robust and interdisciplinary sociolinguistic scholarship, socio-
linguists must both understand situated language use and transcend the local to
provide insight about UGMs of potential universal relevance. In many ways, the
critical realist arguments developed in this paper echo Porpora’s (2015) important
reminder that social scientists of all strands want to understand how the social
world works in large part because they want to improve it. Universalism should,
however, be subjected to ongoing, collective, and cross-cultural critical scrutiny,
precisely because it is a consequential element in how people view the world, their
place, and their actions in it.

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