Literacy Ideologies and the Future of Gascon (original) (raw)

Literacy is best seen as a set of practices resulting from an interaction between writing technologies and literacy ideologies. In evaluating the potential strengths and weaknesses of a set of literacy practices, ideological issues are, if anything, more important than technical ones. Based on an examination of the case of Gascon, one can distinguish at least three aspects of literacy ideologies that are important to language maintenance: depth: the extent and nature of social groups sharing positive literacy ideologies; scope: the set of literacy events that are perceived as normal and acceptable in the language; range: the power that a literacy holds as a result of its validation by external groups. In the case of Gascon, it seems clear that those seeking to reverse language shift have focused most intently on scope. However, it turns out that they may have more room to innovate and strengthen the overall status of the language by focusing on range. The reasons are complex and have to do with the dynamism of nearby Catalunya and with the use of Internet technologies .