Full Description
Over the few past centuries, and the last 65 years in particular, there has been a tremendous reduction in global linguistic diversity, as people abandon minority language varieties and switch to larger and what they perceive to be more economically, socially and politically powerful regional or national languages. In addition, governments have been promoting standardised official languages for use in schooling, media and bureaucracy, often under a rubric of linguistic unity supporting national unity. The last two decades have seen a significant increase in interest in minority languages and language shift, endangerment and loss, in academia and among language speakers and the wider public. There has also been growing interest from anthropological linguists and sociolinguists in the study of language ideologies and beliefs about languages.
This volume brings together chapters on theoretical and practical issues in these two areas, especially the views of linguists and communities about support and revitalisation of endangered languages. The chapters thus go straight to the heart of ideological bases of reactions to language endangerment among those most closely involved, drawing their discussions from case studies of how language ideologies and beliefs affect language practices (and vice versa). Most of the authors conduct collaborative community-based research and take a reflective engagement stance to investigate (potential) clashes in ideological perspectives. This is one of the key theoretical and practical issues in research on endangered languages, and has important implications for language documentation, support and revitalisation, as well as language policy at local, national and international levels.
Contents
1: Peter K. Austin and Julia Sallabank: Introduction
Part 1: Case studies: beliefs and ideologies in endangered language communities
2: Tadhg Ó hIfearnáin: Paradoxes of engagement with Irish language community management, practice and ideology
3: Chryso Hadjidemetriou: Fluidity in language beliefs: The beliefs of the Kormakiti Maronite Arabic speakers of Cyprus towards their language
4: Olimpia Rasom: Reflections on the promotion of an endangered language: The case of Ladin women in the Dolomites (Italy)
5: Anna-Kaisa Räisänen: Minority language use in Kven Communities - Language Shift or Revitalisation
6: Peter K. Austin: Going, going, gone? The ideologies and politics of Gamilaraay-Yuwaalaraay endangerment and revitalisation
7: Lise Dobrin: Language shift in an 'importing culture': The cultural logic of the Arapesh roads
Part 2: Language documentation and revitalisation: what and why?
8: Yan Marquis and Julia Sallabank: Ideologies, beliefs and revitalisation of Guernesiais (Guernsey)
9: Jane Freeland and Eloy Frank Gómez: Local language ideologies and their implications for language revitalisation among the Mayangna Indians of Nicaragua's multilingual Caribbean Coast region
10: James Costa: Must we save the language? Children's discourse on language and community in Provençal and Scottish language revitalisation movements
11: Jeanette King: Revitalising the Maori language?
12: Pierpaolo Di Carlo and Jeff Good: What are we trying to preserve? Diversity, change, and ideology at the edge of the Cameroonian Grassfields
13: Jessica Boynton: The cost of language mobilisation: Wangkatha language ideologies and Native Title
14: Tonya N. Stebbins: Finding the languages we go looking for
15: Vicki Couzens and Christina Eira: Meeting point: Parameters for the study of revival languages
Part 3: From local to international: Interdisciplinary and international views
16: Lenore A. Grenoble and Simone S. Whitecloud: Conflicting goals, ideologies and beliefs in the field
17: Colette Grinevald and Michael Bert: Whose ideology, where and when? Rama (Nicaragua) and Francoprovençal (France) experiences
18: Anahit Minasyan: UN discourse on linguistic diversity and multilingualism: actor analysis, ideological foundations and instrumental functions
19: Bernard Spolksy: Language beliefs and the management of endangered languages
