scholarly journals Defining Māori language revitalisation: A project in folk linguistics

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-311 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan John Albury
Author(s):  
Stuart Dunmore

Situated within the interrelated disciplines of applied sociolinguistics and the sociology of language, this book explores the language use and attitudinal perceptions of a sample of 130 adults who received Gaelic-medium education (GME) at primary school, during the first years of that system’s availability in Scotland. The school is viewed by policymakers as a crucial site for language revitalisation in such diverse contexts as Hawai’i, New Zealand and the Basque Country – as well as throughout the Celtic-speaking world. In Scotland, GME is seen as a key area of language development, regarded by policymakers as a strategic priority for revitalising Gaelic, and maintaining its use by future generations of speakers. Yet theorists have stressed that school-based policy interventions are inadequate for realising this objective in isolation, and that without sufficient support in the home and community, children are unlikely to develop strong identities or supportive ideologies in the language of their classroom instruction. For the first time, this book provides an in-depth assessment of language use, ideologies and attitudes among adults who received an immersion education in a minority language, and considers subsequent prospects for language revitalisation in contemporary society. Based on detailed analyses using mixed methods, the book offers empirically grounded suggestions for individuals and policymakers seeking to revitalise languages internationally. 


AILA Review ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 55-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antje Wilton ◽  
Holger Wochele

In this paper, we focus on comments on language issues from a historical perspective. The concept of the layperson (non-linguist) is discussed to identify laypeople and lay comments in history when the modern concept of a linguist did not yet exist. Two studies show how the historical perspective complements modern research on folk linguistics. Firstly, historical comments about Latin will be put in relation to comments about English, focusing on their roles as linguae francae and exploring the potential and application of the ‘Latin Analogy’. Secondly, an analysis of language appraisal texts of French and Romanian from 1500 to the present shows that the topoi used are still reflected in today’s perception of the languages by their native speakers, affecting the attractiveness of the languages for second language learners.


2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 405-423 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gessiane Picanço

Mundurukú, a Tupian language of Brazil, exhibits two opposite scenarios. On one extreme, there is Mundurukú do Pará, the language of daily communication in the Mundurukú Indigenous Land, with fluent speakers found across all generations and still acquired by children as a mother tongue. On the other extreme, there is Mundurukú do Amazonas, formerly spoken in the Kwatá-Laranjal Indigenous Land, but whose inhabitants have shifted to Portuguese. A group of Mundurukú students from Amazonas decided to initiate a process of language revitalisation as a way to strengthen the community's ethnic and cultural identity. This paper reports the initial stages of language planning, and includes future actions to promote language use in the homes and communities, assessement of language proficiency, and definition of educational programs to teach Mundurukú in local schools.


2009 ◽  
pp. 356-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Niedzielski ◽  
Dennis R. Preston
Keyword(s):  

Pragmatics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 507-528 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mia Halonen ◽  
Sari Pietikäinen

Abstract Phonetic resources, like dialects and accents, are used in ethnic humour to build up a recognisable character that pokes fun at the stereotypes associated with a particular identity, sometimes with critical and political undertones. In this article, we examine the manipulation of one such resource, aspiration, used in performing and mocking one such clichéd character, called the fake Sámi. This character has a contested history in Finnish tourism and marketing practices, and is embedded in a long-standing debate about who can use emblems of Sámi identity for economic purposes. Adopting a sociophonetic language regard and folk linguistics approaches (Preston 2010; Niedzielski & Preston 2003) we explore how “fakeness” is constructed phonetically by the actors performing “Fake Sámi” in an indigenous Sámi television comedy show during a period of intense political debate in Finland over the legal definition of the category of indigenous Sámi. By analysing the use of hyperbolic aspiration of a prominent feature of Lappish Finnish dialect, the non-initial syllable /h/-sound, we show how the fakeness is performed by evoking linguistic stereotypes of a Finnish Lappish dialect and a Finnish English accent by a deliberate misuse of aspiration: aspirating when standard phonemes in speech should not be aspirated and not aspirating when phonemes should be aspirated. We argue that this kind of deliberate ambivalence and misuse of phonetic resources is a phonetic resource for reflexive postmodern identity performances.


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