Integrationism, individualism and personalism: the politics of essentialism

Abstract

Integrationism, unlike Southern Theories, lacks an overtly political agenda, and in general reflects the assumptions of Western liberal individualism. The founder of integrationism, Roy Harris, at points gestured toward a politics of language at the societal level, but this was never fully articulated. Integrationism opposes the systems theory model that underlies modern linguistics, in which agency is subordinated to system, and proposes in effect agency without system. Integrationism’s “lay” orientation can be read as a form of anti-elitism as well as anti-essentialism, as the claims of modern linguistics to special insight or expertise are rejected. In this paper, language politics is discussed in terms of competing discourses of reification and de-essentialization, arguing that there is no one-to-one relationship between essentialization or de-essentialization and progressive politics. For example, essentialization may be part of progressive politics in the advocacy of indigenous languages, whereas de-essentialization may be central to the critique of ideologies associated with dominant languages such as English. Arguably, the lay-oriented stance of integrationism complements the language politics of Southern Theories, in that integrationism’s lay orientation could in principle open the door to the recognition of hitherto ignored or marginalized voices.