Language rights and language survival : sociolinguistic and sociocultural perspectives

311 Pages·2004·1.602 MB·

by  Jane Freeland, Donna Patrick

Language Rights and Language Survival
Sociolinguistic and Sociocultural Perspectives
Edited by
Jane Freeland & Donna Patrick

St. Jerome Publishing
Manchester, UK & Northampton MA
First published 2004 by St. Jerome Publishing
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© Jane Freeland & Donna Patrick 2004
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
Language rights and language survival / edited by Jane Freeland and Donna
Patrick.
p. cm. -- (Encounters, ISSN 1471-0277; v. 4)
Chiefly papers presented at a colloquium “Language rights and wrongs”

organized at the Sociolinguistics Symposium held in Ghent in 2002.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-900650-74-6 (alk. paper)
1. Sociolinguistics--Congresses. 2. Language maintenance--Congresses.
3. Human rights--Congresses. 4. Language planning--Congresses. I.
Freeland, Jane. II. Patrick, Donna, 1959- III. Sociolinguistics Symposium
(2002:Ghent, Belgium) IV. Series: Encounters (St. Jerome Publishing) ; v. 4.
P40.5.L32L36 2004
306. 44--dc22
2003021095
Encounters
A new series on language and diversity
Edited by Jan Blommaert, Marco Jacquemet and Ben Rampton
Diversity has come to be recognized as one of the central concerns in our
thinking about society, culture and politics. At the same time, it has proved
one of the most difficult issues to deal with on the basis of established
theories and methods, particularly in the social sciences. Studying diver-
sity not only challenges widespread views of who we are and what we do
in social life; it also challenges the theories, models and methods by means
of which we proceed in studying diversity. Diversity exposes the bound-
aries and limitations of our theoretical models, in the same way it exposes
our social and political organizations.
Encounters sets out to explore diversity in language, diversity through
language and diversity about language. Diversity in language covers top-
ics such as intercultural, gender, class or age-based variations in language
and linguistic behaviour. Diversity through language refers to the way in
which language and linguistic behaviour can contribute to the construc-
tion or negotiation of such sociocultural and political differences. And
diversity about language has to do with the various ways in which lan-
guage and diversity are being perceived, conceptualized and treated, in
professional as well as in lay knowledge - thus including the reflexive and
critical study of scientific approaches alongside the study of language
politics and language ideologies. In all this, mixedness, creolization, cross-
over phenomena and heterogeneity are privileged areas of study. The
series title, Encounters, is intended to encourage a relatively neutral but
interested stance towards diversity, moving away from the all too obvi-
ous ‘cultures-collide’ perspective that is dominant within the social
sciences. The target public of Encounters includes scholars and advanced
students of linguistics, communication studies, anthropology, cultural
studies, sociology, as well as students and scholars in neighbouring dis-

ciplines such as translation studies, gender studies, gay and lesbian
studies, postcolonial studies.
Jan Blommaert is former Research Director of the IPrA Research Centre
of the University of Antwerp and currently Professor of African linguistics
at the University of Ghent. He is author of Discourse (Cambridge University
Press, forthcoming), co-author of Debating Diversity: Analysing the
Discourse of Tolerance (Routledge 1998), editor of Language Ideological
Debates (Mouton de Gruyter 1999), and co-editor of the Handbook of
Pragmatics (John Benjamins 1995-2003) and The Pragmatics of
Intercultural and International Communication (John Benjamins 1991).
Marco Jacquemet is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at
the University of San Francisco. His work focuses on the complex inter-
action of different languages and communicative practices in a globalized
world. His current research seeks to assess the communicative mutations
resulting from the intersection in the Mediterranean area between mobile
people (migrants, local and international aid workers, missionaries, busi-
nessmen, etc.) and electronic texts (content distributed by satellites, local
television stations, Internet connectivity, cellular telephony). As part of
this research, in the early 1990s he studied the communicative practices
of criminal networks in Southern Italy and the emerging Italian cyber-
culture. In 1994 he conducted fieldwork in Morocco and Italy on migratory
patterns between the two countries. Since 1998, he has been involved in
multi-site ethnographic fieldwork in Albania and Italy, investigating the
linguistic and socio-cultural consequences of Albania’s entry into the glo-
bal system of late-modern capitalism. Marco Jacquemet is author of
Credibility in Court: Communicative Practices in the Camorra Trials
(Cambridge University Press 1996).
Ben Rampton is Professor of Applied and Sociolinguistics at King’s Col-
lege London. His work involves ethnographic and interactional discourse
analysis, frequently also drawing on anthropology, sociology and cultural
studies. His publications cover urban multilingualism; language, youth,
ethnicities and class; language education; second language learning; and
research methodology. Ben Rampton is author of Interaction in an Urban
School: Late Modern Language & Society (Cambridge University Press,
forthcoming), co-author of Researching Language: Issues of Power &
Method (Routledge 1992), and co-editor of The Language, Ethnicity &
Race Reader (Routledge 2003).
Front Cover
A reconstruction of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, 1840. Shows
Kawiti signing the Treaty, watched by witnesses Rev. Richard Taylor and
Mr James Stuart Freeman (standing at right of table-end). At the second
table Hone Heke (in cap) shakes hands with Governor William Hobson. the
seated figure on Hobson’s left (i.e. our right) is James Busby. The group of
Maori in the left foreground are being challenged by one man (Marupo)
with taiaha. Other figures include Joseph Nias, Willoughby Shortland, Rev.
Henry Williams, William Colenso, Samuel Ironside, Felton Mathew,
Charles Baker, Tamati Waka Nene, Patuone, Hakitara, Tareha and
Whareahi.
From the Drawings & Prints Collection – Mitchell.
Creator: Leonard Cornwall Mithcell (1901-1971).
Published on the cover of the New Zealand Journal of Agriculture,
January 1949.
Courtsey of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, N.Z.
Acknowledgements
We would like to express our thanks to all of the contributors to this vol-
ume for their dedication in tailoring their chapters to the themes of this
book and for their active participation during the editing process. Special
thanks are also due to the Encounters series editors Jan Blommaert and
Chris Bulcaen for their editing expertise and consistent support and to
Ken and Mona Baker of St. Jerome Press for their support during the
production of the book. We are also indebted to the conference organizers
and participants of the Sociolinguistics Symposium 14 held in Ghent, Bel-
gium in April 2002 which brought together most of the contributors in this
volume and allowed us to initiate the project. Finally, we would like to
thank Ben Shaer and Alan Freeland for their patience and support during
all the stages of this work.
Jane Freeland and Donna Patrick
Contents
Acknowledgements vi
1. Language Rights and Language Survival 1
Sociolinguistic and Sociocultural Perspectives
JANE FREELAND AND DONNA PATRICK
2. Rethinking Linguistic Human Rights 35
Answering Questions of Identity, Essentialism and Mobility
STEPHEN MAY
3. Rights in Places 55
Comments on Linguistic Rights and Wrongs
JAN BLOMMAERT
4. Minority, but Non-Confrontational 67
Balancing on the Double-edged Sword of Hegemony
and Ambivalence
VILLE LAAKSO AND JAN-OLA ÖSTMAN
5. Revitalization and Retention of First Nations 87
Languages in Southwestern Ontario
REGNA DARNELL
6. Linguistic Rights and Language Survival in a Creole Space 103
Dilemmas for Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast Creoles
JANE FREELAND
7. Can a Language that Never Existed Be Saved? 139
Coming to Terms with Oroqen Language Revitalization
LINDS AY WHALEY
8. Language and Intergroup Perception in Sabah 151
A Case Study of the Rungus Ethnic Community
JEANNET STEPHEN AND VERONICA PETRUS ATIN
9. The Politics of Language Rights in the Eastern 171
Canadian Arctic
DONNA PATRICK
10. Language Rights and Linguistic Citizenship 191
CHRISTOPFER STROUD AND KATHLEEN HEUGH
11. Language Rights, Democracy and the European Union 219
SUE WRIGHT
12. Ideological Dilemmas in Language and Cultural 243
Policies in Madrid Schools
LUISA MARTÍN ROJO
13. Language Rights and Wrongs 273
A Commentary
ALEXANDRA JAFFE
14. Analysis and Stance Regarding Language and 283
Social Justice
MONICA HELLER
List of Contributors 287
Index 291
1. Language Rights and Language Survival
Sociolinguistic and Sociocultural Perspectives
JANE FREELAND AND DONNA PATRICK
1. Introduction
In recent decades, the twin issues of language rights and language sur-
vival have gained importance among activists and academics concerned
with indigenous and other minority languages. This comes in part from an
increased understanding of the academic disadvantages that children face
when they are educated in an imposed language (see e.g. Cummins 1993,
1996) – an awareness that has arguably been the major force behind the
drive to make education in vernacular languages a universal right. It also
arises from a concern, voiced in particular by linguists, over the rapid de-
crease in the number of languages throughout the world as they are pushed
aside by state education policies or by the wider processes of globaliza-
tion. This concern has been voiced most recently in ecological terms, as a
plea for the preservation of the ‘stability and resiliency’ of the world’s
cultures by maintaining language diversity (Terralingua 2002, cited in
Harvey 2003: 249).
These two currents of thought have recently come together in both
popular and academic appeals for the universal support of language rights
and the preservation and revitalization of the languages to which such
rights are most relevant (Fishman 1991, 2001; Crystal 2000; Nettle and
Romaine 2000; Skutnabb-Kangas 2000; Hinton and Hale 2001). These
appeals attracted the attention of those who work in a range of disciplines,
including linguistics, anthropology, sociology, legal studies, and language
education. They have also been a source of support for minority group
leaders, educators, and activists in their local, national, and international
struggles to gain recognition for their languages and cultures, often as a

means for wider group recognition.
Whilst both ‘language rights’ and ‘language survival’ discourses are
able, at least in principle, to empower and emancipate minority communi-
ties, they are nevertheless fraught with complications and contradictions,
related particularly to the terms on which language rights are granted and
the way that these can interact with sociolinguistic realities ‘on the ground’
– with sometimes counterproductive effects. This volume sets out to ex-
plore these complications and contradictions as they arise in a number of
contexts, in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Central and North America.
2 Jane Freeland and Donna Patrick
Most of the chapters of this volume were originally presented as pa-
pers at a colloquium on ‘Language rights and wrongs’ that we organized
at the Sociolinguistics Symposium held in Ghent in 2002, the aim of which
was to critically examine language rights and language survival discourses
from a sociolinguistic perspective. This we saw as part of a larger project
to provide a “forum in which theoretical explorations of rights, citizen-
ship and related concepts can engage with empirical, contextual studies
of rights processes” (Cowan et al.. 2001). We continue to believe this to
be important at a time when developments in sociolinguistics and its com-
panion disciplines of linguistic anthropology, ethnography, and cultural
studies have been developing new frameworks for analysing language in
context which, in fact, seemed to undermine the clarity of the case for
language rights and language survival. More specifically, work on lan-
guage ideologies has ‘denaturalized’ dominant assumptions about language
and nationhood (Silverstein 1979, 1998; Blommaert 1996, 1999; Woolard
and Schieffelin 1994; Woolard 1998); the social theory underpinning so-
ciolinguistics has been subject to critique (Williams 1992; Cameron 1990;
Pennycook 1990, 2001); and the postcolonialist movement has challenged
the universalist claims of modernist thought on the grounds of its
Eurocentricity (Said 1978; Spivak 1988). Being committed to the moral
principles behind the linguistic human rights paradigm, we wish to exam-
ine in the light of these critiques how best to attain its goals.
The contexts that are the focus of these studies are ones in which dis-
courses of language rights and language survival have become prominent
and now interact with local practices, assumptions, and language ideolo-
gies. They include (1) contexts in which speakers of ‘small’ or minority
languages have mobilized around both of these discourses to gain recog-
nition and material and symbolic support within nation-states for their
languages and by extension for the group itself; (2) transnational con-
texts, in which language rights are implicated in wider political and
economic arrangements; and (3) contexts in which a local language (how-
ever ‘language’ is locally defined) might be thought of as ‘dead’ according
to some criteria, yet in local perceptions ‘survives’ and is valued.

In all of these contexts, historical and political processes have shaped
language form and function and created multiple shifting relationships
between language, identity, power, and sociocultural meanings. The dif-
ferent chapters explore the historical contingency of these relationships
and the consequent fluidity of the social categories in which they are based
– not least the category of ‘language’ itself, which language rights dis-
course defines and objectifies in particular ways.
The volume as a whole raises a number of issues relating to the con-
ceptual and empirical dimensions of language rights and language