Comparing ‘new speakerhood’: context, positionality, and power in the new sociolinguistic order (original) (raw)
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Natives, as anthropologists like to imagine them, are (…) rapidly disappearing (Appadurai 1988, p.39) In this paper, we review the debates about " new speakers " of regional minority languages in Europe and discuss how they can be understood as a phenomenon that challenges the linguistic ideologies that emerged with the development of nation-states, industrial capitalism and colonization. We apply the term " new speakers " to a variety of labels used in contexts such as Wales, Ireland, the Basque Country or Brittany to people who do not learn the local language through conventional family transmission, but more typically through education, e.g. bilingual or immersion schools or adult language courses (O'Rourke et al. 2015). It is not a new phenomenon in the sense that such profiles of speakers have always existed. What is new is the fact that the numbers of new speakers have become so large that they emerge as a distinct social category in these contexts. The ways these new speakers learn and the ways they speak these minority languages is perceived as noticeably different from what made up these linguistic communities in the past. As such, their presence unsettles the inherited ideological repertoires that articulated language, identity, authenticity and national belonging in the modern period. From this viewpoint, they constitute –we argue-one more amongst the many dissonances that contemporary sociolinguistics has identified in the received notions of languages as bounded entities inscribed in communities and territories in specific ways. The leaders of the COST New Speakers network have attempted (and only partially succeeded) to query researchers in other areas such as the sociolinguistics of migration or " world Englishes " so that they explored the connections between contentions over identity, authenticity and linguistic ownership in European minority language contexts and their own material. Given the fact that new speakers are by definition " non-native " speakers in the strict sense, the label can arguably be applied to examine other issues occurring around the emergence of new profiles of speakers due to migration, the appropriation of English in former colonies and also the internationalization of English. Thus, in this paper, we review mostly research on European territorial minorities; but we also spell out how we see the potential connections with these other fields within a wider theoretical framework. The concept of " the native " becomes therefore important in this context, and it connects with wider debates on the " native " in linguistics and anthropology about the politics that inform these disciplines. Our argument is that ideologies of nationalism and colonialism help understand why the category of " native speaker " provides the basis for ideological and political tensions that emerge in different though connected ways both in minority language contexts in Europe and North-America, and in former British colonies. We look at the ways in which these tensions are played out both in relation to language policies and on how academic disciplines like sociolinguistics, applied linguistics or linguistic anthropology inform the politics of language in these contentions.
LINGUISTIC REVITALIZATION: SOCIAL STAKES AND NEW RESEARCH DIRECTIONS: AN AFTERWORD
This paper was written as an afterword to a special section of the French journal Langage et Societe, co-edited by James Costa. The aim of the section was to subject to critical sociolinguistic analysis the language revitalisation paradigm which has long dominated research into minority languages. Each of its three papers suggests, in the contexts of Provence, Ireland, and indigenous Nicaragua, that language renewal movements are bids by minority groups for wider social stakes in the modern societies where they live, rather than claims to back-ward looking identities. The Afterword aims to set the three pieces in dialogue with each other, and so contribute to a project proposed by (Duchêne and Heller (2012) for a proposed "multi-site ethnography" which juxtaposes cases from "sites differentially situated ... with respect to the conditions ... of late capitalist markets” (2012:21). In so doing, it offers further sidelights on the conception of this proposal. Reference: Duchene and Heller (eds) (2012), Language in Late Capitalism: Pride and Profit, New York & London, Routledge.
Journal of Celtic Linguistics, 2017
Is fearr Gaeilge briste ná Béarla cliste 'Better broken Irish than clever English'. Variants of this slogan are the watchword of numerous language revitalization efforts. Such attitudes speak volumes about the priorities of neo-speaker activists, namely, that using the language as intensively as possible, no matter how badly they master it, is far more important than learning it well and linking up with the traditional native-speaker community in order to ensure some sort of continuity in the revival effort. Michael Hornsby's Revitalizing Minority Languages: New Speakers of Breton, Yiddish and Lemko does not actually assess how successfully, if at all, Breton, Yiddish and Lemko are being revitalized. Rather, the book is a paean to the 'new speaker' phenomenon, and uses stodgy sociolinguistic jargon 1 to trumpet that neo-speakers can do no wrong: they are the uncontested future of the languages; any criticism is inherently inimical to revitalization efforts, and hence objectionable. The slim volume, priced at a whopping £58, despite a manifest lack of copy-editing, is divided into an introduction and five chapters on minority languages, Breton, Yiddish, Lemko, and the future of minority languages.
Addressing the context and complexity of indigenous language revitalization
This response discusses six key themes that emerge, either explicitly or implicitly, from Nancy Hornberger's exemplary analysis of the challenges facing indigenous language revitalization initiatives, particularly as they are currently expressed and implemented in three key indigenous language education contexts--Quechua in the South American Andes; Guarani in Paraguay and Maori in Aotearoa/New Zealand. These themes include, first, the importance of recognizing the wider social and political contexts within which indigenous revitalization initiatives are invariably situated. Second, it requires a related recognition of the internationalism of these initiatives. Third, any academic analysis of indigenous language revitalization requires, or at least must benefit from, an interdisciplinary approach, as exemplified by Hornberger's own analysis. Fourth, Hornberger's continua of biliteracy provides a sufficiently robust framework to explore the complexities and interrelations...
Resisting rhetorics of language endangerment: Reclamation through Indigenous language survivance
Language Documentation and Description, 2017
Hill (2002) (and the robust discussions it inspired) demonstrated the importance of looking carefully at the rhetorics used by academics when discussing Indigenous and endangered languages. Fifteen years later this still remains a subject of concern. In this article I examine how three related strategies are increasingly employed in both academic and public domains: Linguistic extraction is the process of discussing languages and language reclamation movements removed from the personal lives, communicative practices, and embodied experiences in which they inherently are embedded, while the erasure of colonial agency minimises the historical and ongoing causes of language endangerment and dormancy, sometimes to the extent of misattributing agency for such realities onto Indigenous communities themselves. Lasting is a discursive process through which Indigenous populations are framed as ‘vanishing’, first by defining Indians based on a singular characteristic, and then lamenting the passing of the ‘last’ Indians assumed to have had that single defining characteristic (O’Brien 2010). I explore the implications of these rhetorics for both endangered language movements and the communities at the center of those movements, with a particular emphasis on the discursive tactics that resist these strategies which are utilised by Indigenous community members and language activists.
“Don’t Paint it White”: Differentiation and Continuity in Language Revitalization
The goals of language workers and community members often conflict in language revitalization work, frequently because of unrecognized differences in language ideologies. Researchers often assume that community members need education about language revitalization methods and don’t seriously engage with their concerns, and so these ideological differences become invisible impediments to the goals of researchers and community members alike. Outsider researchers have much expertise to offer, but only when ultimate control over the direction of language work is in community members’ hands. This thesis aims to illustrate the importance of conflicting language ideologies and language related goals in regards to maintenance efforts for the Wangkatha language of Western Australia. It specifically addresses conflicts between Wangkatha ideas about the orality of their culture vs researchers’ drives to develop written materials; between Wangkatha language socialization and revitalizationist pedagogy; and between traditional relationships between language, land and people and those that are pervasive in the wake of Native Title. The overarching argument is that when researchers fail to engage deeply with the goals of community members or with their own language ideologies, they may unwittingly jeopardize what is important for the community. Chapter one introduces the topic of study, provides a basic overview of the community being studied, and locates this research in relation to the literature. Chapter two places the study within the context of the sociolinguistic history of the research area. Wangkatha language is used largely to index an identity that has been threatened by assimilation since early contact. Differentiation between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal is paramount. Therefore, preserving the language through anglicizing practices does not ameliorate the effects of past inequalities or improve the position of the language; rather, it promulgates inequality and, in one consultant’s words, threatens to “paint the language white”. Chapter three discusses language graphization – that is, the ideologies and practices related to rendering language in writing. Writing is often considered necessary for successful language revitalization, but community members see serious risks in its implementation. It forces language into western contexts and even causes anglicized mispronunciation. Outsider experts can advise community members about the potential benefits of an indigenous orthography, but they cannot decide for them whether the benefits outweigh the risks and inevitable costs. Chapter four discusses language in schools in the same light. While inclusion in schools can be extremely beneficial to a language’s status and ultimate survival, it can also usurp Aboriginal authority and confound appropriate language socialization and use. Enforcing pedagogically sound language teaching regardless of its effect on sociolinguistic practices not only limits the likelihood that the community will ‘be on board’; it imposes some kinds of change in the name of reversing other kinds of change, ever under the assumption that western knowledge (including pedagogy) provides the best answer. Taking a somewhat different angle, chapter five discusses language mobilization. As with the above phenomena, when language is mobilized specifically for Native Title, focus falls on the structure of language to the near exclusion of linguistic practices and ideologies. Just as with language graphization and language in schools, the importance of sociolinguistic practice and comparatively invisible language ideology is rarely taken seriously; the importance of much more easily identified linguistic form is, on the other hand, magnified.