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- Convenors:
-
P. Kerim Friedman
(National Dong Hwa University)
Tzu-kai Liu (Academia Sinica)
- Discussant:
-
Monica Heller
(University of Toronto)
- Stream:
- Relational movements: Lively Languages/Mouvements relationnels: Langues vivantes
- Location:
- VNR 3075
- Start time:
- 6 May, 2017 at
Time zone: America/New_York
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
This panel explores how language ideologies are transformed by the movement of minority language speakers, as well as the movement of discourses about minority languages as they transverse different communities of practice.
Long Abstract:
This panel contributes to the growing body of literature on the language ideologies of minority language speakers by exploring what happens when these ideologies move across geographical, political and cultural scapes. By "language ideologies" (Woolard and Schieffelin 1994) we are referring to the beliefs and attitudes people hold about languages, about the people who speak those languages, and about the communicative practices of those speakers. We are interested in how these beliefs and attitudes are affected by two different kinds of movement: the movement of minority language speakers themselves, as well as the movement of discourses about minority languages as they transverse different communities of practice. The first kind of movement is exemplified by the changing language attitudes of minorities who have migrated to large urban centers where their language might gain new meaning as a tool for forging affective ties with other members of their speech community. The second kind of movement can be observed when minority language activists must reframe local ideologies in order to get support from the state. As a result of these movements language ideologies come to be reinterpreted at different geographic and temporal scales (Carr and Lempert 2016). This raises a number of important questions: How do shifts in scale change the perceived relationship of minority languages to the wider linguistic hierarchy? How do language ideologies come to embrace or reject different chronotopes (Silverstein 2005) as a result of these shifts? How are linguistic practices reconfigured as a result of these ideological transformations?
Accepted papers:
Session 1Yayoi Mitsuda
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines a recent situation of indigenous language revitalization in Taiwan and also explores how language ideologies and ideas of indigenous "local" knowledge are shifting through online/anti-spatial learning.
Paper long abstract:
Language is one of the most important cultural features of a group and often acts as a principle marker of ethnicity. Under the governance of non-indigenous polities, Taiwanese indigenous peoples were expected to abandon their "backward" cultures and language throughout both Japanese colonial and early KMT eras. Under these circumstances many indigenous languages have disappeared or are now in danger of disappearing. One of these endangered languages is the Thao language, now spoken by less than 10 native speakers. In response to this crisis, the Taiwanese government started the "Salvage Endangered Languages Project" and Language Certification Test with the explicit goal of saving these endangered languages (and cultures) so that Taiwan can maintain a cultural diversity that will continue to distinguish Taiwan from China. Consequently, several language revitalization movements begun among Taiwanese indigenous population, and some indigenous elites even assert ideas with a touch of indigenous ethnolinguistic centrism. Among Thao people, Thao language has long ceased to be a meaningful cultural and ethnic marker. In recent times, however, community-driven language projects and voluntarily formed online study groups, especially on SNS, are active promoting the Thao language revitalization. This paper discusses the loss of the Thao language within its historical context, explores the status of the Thao language within Thao culture, and examines how the Thao language ideologies and ideas of indigenous "local" knowledge are shifting through online/anti-spatial learning.
Anu Muhonen (University of Toronto )
Paper short abstract:
I will discuss the value of a long-term sociolinguistic ethnography in exploring multilingualism and minority language ideologies in a contemporary superdiversity. I will also reflect on the shifting roles - and different scales of insider and outsider positionings - of the ethnographer in the superdiverse context
Paper long abstract:
I will discuss the value and impact of long-term sociolinguistic ethnography in exploring multiligualism and minority language ideologies in contemporary superdiversity (Vertovec 2007). Drawing on rich ethnographic and sociolinguistic material collected in a transnational research project IDII4MES (Investigating Discourses of Inheritance and Identity in four Multilingual European Settings), I will concentrate on the shifting trajectories, repertoires and identity representations of a multicultural and –lingual family of Omar, a key participant in the project. The data reflected in the light of my personal ethnographic path.
Ethnography allows one to tell a story of someone elses experience (Heller 2008). Sociolinguistic ethnography allowed me to access public and private centers of Omar’s trajectories. Doing ethnogragy in superdiversity also challenged my role as an ethnographer: I was constantly on the move between different scales of insider and outsider positionings. “Big things matter if we want to understand the small things of discourse” (Blommaert 2010); large structures of culture, heritage, and history can be identifiable in the fine grain of multilingual language practices (Blackledge 2012). My paper aims to contribute to discourse on the value of long-term sociolinguistic ethnography.
Blackledge, A. 2012. Investigating Discourses of Inheritance and Identities in Four Multilingual European Settings, NALDIC Quarterly 10 (1).
Blommaert, J. 2010. The Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Heller, M. 2008. Doing Ethnography. In L. Wei & M. Moyer (eds) The Blackwell Guide to Research Methods in Bilingualism and Multilingualism, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Vertovec, S 2007. Super-diversity and its implications. Ethnic and Racial Studies. 30, 6.
Nobutaka KAMEI (Aichi Prefectural University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper focuses on a new emerging identity of "Langue des Signes d'Afrique Francophone (LSAF)" as a result of the legacy of the Deaf education and the new movements by Deaf community in West and Central Africa with the results based on a long-term fieldwork in the sign language community.
Paper long abstract:
This paper focuses on a new emerging identity of "Langue des Signes d'Afrique Francophone (LSAF, French-speaking African Sign Language)" as a result of the legacy of the Deaf education and the new movements by Deaf community in West and Central Africa with the results based on a long-term fieldwork in the sign language community.
In this area, the education for the Deaf has started since 1957 by Andrew J. Foster, a Deaf African-American pastor/educator. It introduced American Sign Language (ASL) for the first time in Africa. After the process of the pidginization and the creolization with spoken/written French, ASL introduced in Africa became a new sign language with loan words of ASL and grammatical characters of French.
This sign language has been considered as one of the various dialects of ASL in the world. Through a long-term fieldwork that started in 1997 and the discussions among the Deaf community, this sign language recently started to be considered as a newly constructed independent sign language that differs from ASL.
The field data and the products of several dictionaries of this sign language edited by Deaf Africans support the recognition that the name of this sign language is now changing and the identity of the African Deaf community is also shifting.
Some examples will be shown with the cases in several countries. Also the controversies between the Pan-Africanism and the nationalism among the Deaf community will be discussed.
Tzu-kai Liu (Academia Sinica)
Paper short abstract:
Focusing on the multiple language ideologies of Chinese in terms of enregisterment and language diversity, this paper discusses that skills in speaking and writing Chinese are celebrated by Wa migrants as capital of economic mobility and as communication skills in China’s multiethnic labor market.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines the impacts of the neoliberal ideology of work upon the linguistic practices of Wa migrants when they move from rural homelands to an industrial district in Shenzhen, China. In the neoliberal workplaces, workers normally receive pay in exchange for the skills they can offer and use at work (Urciuoli 2008). The skills in speaking and writing Chinese mean learning to be a flexible economic actor. However, the combination of poor schooling and social inequality often creates an obstacle for Wa migrants (non-native Chinese speakers) to compete with their Han counterparts to achieve job promotion and to master communication skills in the Chinese-dominant workplaces. Furthermore, communication skills in speaking a particular language are often linked to the discourses of profit and capital for constructing neoliberal subjectivity (Heller and Duchêne 2012). The varieties of Chinese spoken by the populations of Chinese workers, I further suggest, present a different language ideology about language diversity among the workers. Focusing on the multiple language ideologies of Chinese in terms of enregisterment and language diversity, this paper discusses: how the state discourse about rural citizens' participation in labor work as a means for antipoverty affects Wa migrants' views of mobility and linguistic practices; how the language ideologies of Chinese play a determining role in the economic lives of Wa workers; and how they evaluate and comment on their various degree in mastering interethnic communication skills in Chinese along with their mixed feelings about desire for labor employment and work hardships.