Linguistic Minorities, Policies and Pluralism. Applied Language Studies

323 Pages·1984·17.627 MB·

by  John Edwards

Applied Language Studies
Edited by David Crystal
Directions in Applied Linguistics, Crystal, D. 1981
The Nature of Phonological Disability in Children, Grunwell, P. 1981
Information and Meaning in Child Communication, Lloyd, P. and
Beveridge, M. 1981
Perspectives in Communicative Language Teaching, Johnson, K. and
Porter, D. 1982
Current Developments in Language Testing, Hughes, A. and
Porter, D. 1983
Lexicography: Principles and Practice, Hartmann, R. R. K. 1983
Applied Sociolinguistics, Trudgill, P. 1984
Linguistic Minorities, Policies and Pluralism, Edwards, J.
Linguistic Minorities,
Policies and Pluralism
Edited by
John Edwards
Department of Psychology
St Francis Xavier University
Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada
1984
Academic Press
(Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers)
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Linguistic minorities, policies and pluralism.
—(Applied language studies)
1. Linguistic minorities
I. Edwards, J. II. Series
305.7 P119.315
ISBN 0-12-232760-8
LCCCN 83-73316
Photoset by Paston Press, Norwich
Printed in Great Britain by St Edmundsbury Press, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
Contributors
BRIAN M. BULLIVANT, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia 3168
JIM CUMMINS, Modern Language Centre, Ontario Institute for Studies in Educa­
tion, 252 Βloor Street West, Toronto, Ontario M5S1V6, Canada
GLENDON F. DRAKE, California State University, Long Beach, California 90840,
USA
CAROL M. EASTMAN, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195,
USA
JOHN EDWARDS, Department of Psychology, St Francis Xavier University,
Antigonish, Nova Scotia B2G ICO, Canada
VIV EDWARDS, 18 Morgan Road, Reading, Berks, UK
PHILIP GLEASON, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556, USA
WILLIAM F. MACKEY, Centre International de Recherche sur le Bilinguisme,
Université Laval, Quebec, P.Q. G1K7P4, Canada
TOVE SKUTNABB-KANGAS, Nyvej 17, DK4050 Skibby, Denmark
COLIN H. WILLIAMS, Department of Geography, North Staffordshire
Polytechnic, Stoke-on-Trent ST42DΕ, UK
Biographical Notes
BRIAN BULLIVANT is Reader in Education, Monash University. He was chair-
man of the university's Centre for Migrant Studies for 1977-78, and director of the
cross-national Survey of Teacher Education for Pluralist Societies (STEPS) during
1978-79. His major fields of interest are the anthropology of education and
ethnographic research methodology. His publications include The Way of Tradi-
tion: Life in an Orthodox Jewish School (1978), The Pluralist Dilemma in Educa-
tion (1981) and Race, Ethnicity and Curriculum (1981).
JIM CUMMINS is Assistant Professor, Modern Language Centre, Ontario Institute
for Studies in Education. He received his PhD from the University of Alberta in
1974. His research interests include minority group achievement, bilingualism and
reading disability. He was the recipient (with J. P. Das) of the International
Reading Association's Albert J. Harris Award (1979), for the best paper on
detection and remediation of reading disability.
GLENDON DRAKE is Vice President for Academic Affairs, California State
University. Previous positions include Dean of Arts and Science, University of
Michigan (Flint) and Chairman, Linguistics Department, San Diego State
University. He is the author of The Role of Prescriptivism in American Linguistics,
1820-1975 (1977), and of "Ethnicity, values and language policy in the United
States".
CAROL EASTMAN is Professor of Anthropology and Adjunct Professor of
Linguistics, University of Washington. Her major interests include anthropologi-
cal linguistics and sociolinguistics; she has studied Swahili-speaking areas in East
Africa and the Haida language in North America. She has written Aspects of
Language and Culture (1975), Linguistic Theory and Language Description (1978)
and Language Planning: An Introduction (1982).
JOHN EDWARDS is Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, St Francis
Xavier University. His research interests include language and educational dis-
advantage, bilingual education and the language/identity relationship. He is the
author of Language and Disadvantage (1979), The Social Psychology of Reading
(1981) and The Irish Language (1983). Another work, Language and Identity, is
currently in preparation. Dr Edwards is the review editor of the Journal of
Language and Social Psychology.
Viii BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
VIV EDWARDS is the author of The West Indian Language Issue in British Schools
(1979) and Language in Multicultural Classrooms (1983). She has taught socio-
linguistics and worked widely in pre-service and in-service teacher training. She
currently co-directs the SSRC project "Patterns of Language Use in the British
Black Community" in Reading.
PHILIP GLE ASON is Professor of History, University of Notre Dame. His interests
include American intellectual and social history, with emphasis on ethnic history
and that of Catholicism. He is the author of "American identity and Americaniza-
tion" in the Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups and of "Americans
all: World War II and the shaping of American identity".
WILLIAM MACKEY is Professor in the Centre International de Recherche sur le
Bilinguisme, Université Laval. He is a fellow of the Royal Academy of Belgium
and of the Royal Society of Canada. He studied at Laval, Manitoba, Harvard and
Geneva, and has taught in several universities in Europe and America. He has
served on national language commissions in Australia, Canada and Ireland, and is
the author of more than two dozen books and two hundred articles on bilingual
education, language policy and language teaching.
TOVE SKUTNABB-KANGAS was raised and educated in both Finnish and
Swedish. Currently guest researcher at the University of Roskilde, she has been
associated with Helsinki, Lund and Harvard University. Her major interest is the
way in which the powerless status of minorities is reproduced in different countries;
this is the subject of a forthcoming book, Bilingualism or Not: The Education of
Minorities.
COLIN WILLIAMS is Senior Lecturer, Department of Geography, North Stafford-
shire Polytechnic. Educated at the University of Wales and the University of
Western Ontario, he was a Visiting Professor and Fulbright Scholar at Pennsyl-
vania State University during 1982-83. He is interested in political geography and
comparative ethnic relations, and has written National Separatism (1982). He is
the founder editor of Discussion Papers in Geolinguistics.
Preface
Linguistic minority groups are much in the news nowadays. Of clear intrinsic
interest, they also provide a useful perspective on group relations and can
tell us much about the aims, purposes and values held by the societies in
which they exist. The existence and the study of minority groups raise
questions about the structure of society—about perceptions of pluralism and
assimilation—which might otherwise not be discussed. Within the general
area of minority group studies, language matters play a particularly impor-
tant part. This is because language is one of the most salient group markers;
indeed, some regard a distinctive group language as an essential component
of a unique identity.
The aim of this book is to examine the current position of some linguistic
minority groups, and the policies (particularly educational) which affect
them. Of special concern is the relationship between language and identity
which, for some at least, is the essence of the pluralism-assimilation ques-
tion. While it has obviously been impossible to deal exhaustively with the
subject, the reader will find here both specific illustrations of minority status
and policy and general discussions of important and recurring features of
minority matters. Although there is a large literature, both popular and
academic, dealing with linguistic minority groups, treatment has not always
been unbiased. As one might expect in an area in which academic interest
and social policy can intersect, there has been a considerable amount of
advocatory and polemical writing. It has been an aim in the present
collection, therefore, to try and avoid this pitfall and to attempt an objective
account of minority history, status and policy.
At the most general level, the book attempts to assemble information
bearing upon rationales and policies for linguistic and cultural pluralism. In
fact, it is the hope of the contributors that readers will find in this collection
a balanced and reasonable account of assimilation and pluralism—an
account which has so far been lacking in the literature. At the very least, the
chapters here demonstrate that there is not a simple opposition between
pluralism and assimilation, that there are difficulties with educational
programmes intended to support minority group language and identity, that
χ PREFACE
minority views are not themselves homogeneous, and that advocates of
cultural pluralism often hold over-simplified and unrealistic ideas. At the
same time, it will be seen that pluralism has strong attractions for certain
groups and that, as a philosophical position, it is not without merit. The task
confronting the serious student of minority issues is the separation of fact
from wish, of objective assessment from subjective polemic. I hope this
book will be useful in this effort.
February 1984 JOHN EDWARDS
Introduction
John Edwards
I think it is fair to say that, in recent years, there has been a great resurgence
of interest, among the academic community, in minority languages and
linguistic groups. Furthermore, there has been a considerable swing from
the espousal of an assimilationist point of view to one which embraces some
form of pluralism. The possibility of an enduring, linguistically plural society
has animated many writers, some of whom have been apologists for the
position, departing from the disinterested and objective stance which we
usually associate with scientific treatment. This has led to an increasing
confusion in the area of facts and values, of dispassionate assessment and
provocative polemic. Drake (1979, chapter 5) has referred to this as a
reflection of "Mannheim's Paradox", in which personal values colour per-
ceptions of issues and of data bearing upon them. This is certainly not a
problem unique to sociolinguistics, or to social science generally, but its
effect is perhaps most pronounced in these areas, which so often deal with
matters of immediate and ongoing concern. The naive reader, attempting to
grasp modern thinking on such issues as language maintenance, assimilation/
pluralism and linguistic identity, will find a confusing mixture of controversy,
claim and counterclaim. Often one can faintly hear the grinding of particular
axes and, occasionally, these are brought out into full view. It is regrettably
true that much special pleading is hidden behind what looks to be objective
social science argument—jargon-ridden, illiterate and pretentious though
this so often is.
It is important to be able to consider the matters under study here with
some historical awareness. While linguistic minorities and the fate of "small"
LINGUISTIC MINORITIES Copyright © 1984 by Academic Press, London
ISBN 0-12-232760-8 All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
2 JOHN EDWARDS
languages are experiencing a renewed attention, questions of linguistic
identity, of language shift, of the "new ethnicity" or the "Roots phenom-
enon", and so on extend back at least to the times of the European linguistic
nationalists of the early nineteenth century. Fichte and Herder, Schleier-
macher and Humboldt all had pronounced views on the language-identity
link (and many of these views can be examined in the works of contemporary
writers). To cite an example of their influence, we could consider the Celtic
revival movements of the late nineteenth century. Romantic, nationalistic
and idealistic in nature, they clearly endorsed sentiments which had gained
currency a century and more before. Consider the following:
Absolutely nothing is so important for a nation's culture as its language.
Humboldt, 1797: see Grafton, 1981
[By forsaking language], a Volk destroys its "self" for language and the
national consciousness to which it gives rise are inseparably joined.
Herder, 1772: See Barnard, 1965
Has a nation anything more precious than the language of its fathers?
Herder: see Berlin, 1976
The German speaks a language which has been alive ever since it first issued
from the force of nature, whereas the other Teutonic races speak a language
which has movement on the surface only but is dead at the root.
Fichte, 1807
A people without a language of its own is only half a nation ... to lose your
native tongue ... is the worst badge of conquest.
Davis, 1945
The last expression here, made by Davis in 1843, would stand as a motto
for the Irish revival movement. Indeed, de Valera (cited in Dwyer, 1980)
noted: "If I had to make a choice between political freedom without the
language, and the language without political freedom ... I would choose the
latter." Douglas Hyde, first president of the revivalist Gaelic League,
summarized much of the pro-Irish sentiment in his famous address on the
de-anglicization of Ireland, the essence of which is the necessity for Irish for
a true Irish identity (1894). The Irish movement, like others, flourished for
about twenty-five years or so, between 1890 and 1915, and presents an
instructive example for students of the area (see Edwards, in press (a)).
Interest waned, for a number of reasons, but has recently resurfaced and, in
this resurgence, it joins with the new wave of linguistic nationalism. A crude
documentation of this cycle is given by the number of publications dealing
with the sociolinguistics (broadly defined) of Irish (Edwards, 1983). In the
five-year periods 1880-1884,1885-1889 and 1890-1894, less than ten publi-