Enhancing Information Accessibility and Digital Literacy for Minorities Using Language Technology—the Example of Sámi and Other National Minority Languages in Sweden

2007 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meital Pinto

In the postcolonial era, we have witnessed waves of mass immigration. Consequently, many states are no longer associated with just one or two national languages. Newly formed immigrant minorities raise demands for language rights, alongside national minorities, which raise similar demands.Such a complex situation exists, for example, in Canada, where only French and English are declared official languages although there are other languages, such as Chinese, which are spoken by large communities of people. My paper addresses the general question of which linguistic minorities are most entitled to comprehensive language rights. Will Kymlicka distinguishes between national minorities, which he regards as deserving of comprehensive language rights, and immigrant minorities which are not. Many scholars challenge Kymlicka’s distinction. However, none of them have suggested alternative criteria for distinguishing minority languages that are entitled to protection from minority languages that are less entitled to protection. In my paper, I suggest such a criterion. My alternative criterion is based on the intrinsic interest people have in protecting their own language as the marker of their cultural identity, thus, comprehensive language rights are to be accorded to linguistic minorities that possess the strongest intrinsic interest in the protection of their language as their marker of cultural identity. I apply my criterion to the Israeli case, in which there are two dominant linguistic minorities: the Arab national minority and the Jewish Russian immigrant minority. Relying on general criticism of Kymlicka’s distinction, I argue that this distinction is not applicable to the Israeli linguistic case. Applying my alternative criterion to the Israeli case, I argue that Israeli Arabs have a stronger interest in Arabic than the Russian Jewish minority has in Russian because Arabic constitutes Israeli Arabs’ exclusive marker of identity.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 93-111
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Puzyniak

Położenie mniejszości narodowych na terenie Republiki Słowackiej regulują liczne akty prawne. Wśród nich znajdują się dokumenty przyjmowane na gruncie krajowym oraz rozwiązania o charakterze międzynarodowym. Celem niniejszego artykułu jest przedstawienie treści najważniejszych ustaw oraz dokumentów, które wpływają na położenie mniejszości narodowych na Słowacji, a także przybliżenie reakcji organizacji międzynarodowych na wprowadzane przez Bratysławę regulacje prawne. The legal status of national minorities in the Slovak Republic The location of national minorities in the territory of the Slovak Republic is regulated by numerous national acts, the most important of which are the constitution, the law on the use of national minority languages and the law on the state language. References to national minorities can be found in many other acts, such as the Act on counteracting discrimination, the Act on Upbringing and Education and the Act on Radio and Television. The issue of minorities is also raised in bilateral agreements, an example of which is the agreement on good neighbourliness and friendly cooperation between the Slovak Republic and the Republic of Hungary. The legal situation of minorities in Slovakia is also influenced by international organizations to which Bratislava belongs. In this case, the Council of Europe’s most significant influence, the European Union, the Central European Initiative and the United Nations. Over the years, the Slovak authorities have also created institutions responsible for activities for national minorities, and among them, an important function is performed by the Government Plenipotentiary of the Slovak Republic for National Minorities. This article aims to analyse the legal acts and institutions regulating the legal status of national minorities in Slovakia. The publication is also intended to show that the issue of minorities is covered in many legal solutions, and the Slovak authorities have developed a system of protection and support for this community over the years. The author used the institutional and legal method.


2021 ◽  
pp. 3-19
Author(s):  
Halyna Shumytska ◽  

This article explores trends in language policies in the Transcarpathian region during 1991–2020 within the general Ukrainian sociopolitical context. It is argued that the status of the Ukrainian language as the state language in the region has become strengthened as evidenced by recent developments in language planning and language policy, including the adoption of the Law “On Ensuring the Functioning of the Ukrainian Lan-guage as the Official Language”. However, the manipulation of the language question in Ukraine, especially in the border regions, has taken on a political character, spreading beyond the borders of the state, threatening the constitutional order and the state sovereignty of Ukraine, in particu-lar in education, economics, and legal sphere. In Transcarpathia, a multi-ethnic border region in the extreme west of Ukraine, warrants attention of both scholars and politicians. This article looks into the changes in the Ukrainian language policies in the local state administration, and the importance of the Ukrainian president office in this regard. Specific features of the linguo-political situation in Transcarpathia, viewed at different periods of its development from the independence of Ukraine in 1991 on-ward, are presented. This study determines the role of the media in shaping a regional linguo-political situation, including the Internet media language space. The paper provides data of a comprehensive analy-sis of the results of the 2017–2019 external independent evaluation as an indicator of language competence of the participants of EIE, the results of research on the perception of educational language innovations in the region through a survey of different categories of respondents during 2018, the monitoring of experimental experience in implementing elements of multilingual edu-cation in educational institutions in Ukraine, particularly in Transcarpathia. The author outlines prospects for continued research in the framework of the project “Debat ing Linguistic Diversity: Managing National Minority Languages in Ukraine and Russia” (2020–2023). Keywords: language policy, language situation, state language, mother tongue, minority language, multilingual education, mass media.


2021 ◽  
pp. 211-218
Author(s):  
Chaim Seymour

The article raises the role of the minority national language within a global information society. The Hebrew language is a unique case of the revival of a classic language. In the early twentieth century a project was carried out to establish a technical university in what was then called Palestine The founders preferred to teach in Gem an, the dominant international scientific language technology. They daimed that Hebrew was unsuitable for scientific discourse. The opposition succeeded in defeating the founders and thus guaranteed the use of Hebrew in the fields of science and technology. The changing relationships and tension between the local language and the international lingua franca is still subject to debate today and the events of the so-called language war have much to teach us.


2020 ◽  
Vol 91 (4) ◽  
pp. 15-26
Author(s):  
O. V. Shevchenko

The need to create an effective mechanism to ensure the implementation of language policy by our state has been increased at the present stage of the development of Ukraine and its legal system. It, on the one hand, will ensure the revival and spread of the Ukrainian language, and on the other will allow the development of national minority languages in accordance with the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (1992), the UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities (1992), the UN Resolution on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities (1995), The Oslo Recommendations on the Language Rights of National Minorities (1998) and other existing international legal acts. Historical experience can significantly help the successful implementation of measures aimed at improving the effectiveness of domestic legislation in this area. It will allow us not to repeat the mistakes of the past and take into account and use the positive developments. Unfortunately, domestic practice demonstrates a clear lack of attention to the study and use of such experience. The purpose of the article is a comprehensive historical and legal analysis of the processes of legal consolidation and implementation of the language policy of the Russian Empire on the Ukrainian lands in the XIX – early XX centuries. In accordance with the purpose, the following tasks have been formulated: to consider how the imperial language policy has evolved, aimed at narrowing the scope of using the language of the Ukrainian people for assimilation, to emphasize the role and significance of the legal component in these processes that was expressed in the legislation and law-enforcement activity of the relevant state authorities. Scientific novelty is manifested in the fact that this article is one of the first scientific works, where the problems of legal consolidation of Russification language policy on the Ukrainian lands during the past and the beginning of the last centuries are studied according to the latest methodological positions, based on a comprehensive analysis of existing scientific literature, regulatory and law-enforcement acts, as well as other historical and legal sources. The author of the article has emphasized that the tsar pursued a policy of incessant formal and legal restrictions on the Ukrainian language during this period. It has been claimed that during the 60-80s of the XIX century there was the legislative consolidation of that policy. The author has determined the purpose of the imperial government – to limit the scope of use of the Ukrainian language in order to prevent it from becoming a key element in the creation of Ukrainian identity.


2015 ◽  
pp. 108
Author(s):  
Veronika Vincze ◽  
Ágoston Nagy ◽  
Csilla Horváth ◽  
Norbert Szilágyi ◽  
István Kozmács ◽  
...  

Nowadays, digital language use such as reading and writing e-mails, chats, messages, weblogs and comments on websites and social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter has increased the amount of written language production for most of the users. Thus, it is primarily important for speakers of minority languages to have the possibility of using their own languages in the digital world too. The FinUgRevita project aims at providing computational language tools for endangered indigenous Finno-Ugric languages in Russia, assisting the speakers of these languages in using the indigenous languages in the digital space. Currently, we are working on two Finno-Ugric minority languages, namely, Udmurt and Mansi. In the project, we have been developing electronic dictionaries for both languages, besides, we have been creating corpora with a substantial number of texts collected, among other sources like literature, newspaper articles and social media. We have been also implementing morphological analyzers for both languages, exploiting the lexical entries of our dictionaries. We believe that the results achieved by the FinUgRevita project will contribute to the revitalization of Udmurt and Mansi and the tools to be developed will help these languages establish their existence in the digital space as well.


2020 ◽  
pp. 51-59
Author(s):  
Luis M. Romero-Rodríguez ◽  
Paloma Contreras-Pulido ◽  
Bárbara Castillo-Abdul

Screens have gradually become a part of our daily routine, becoming the activity that occupies most of our daily hours of activity. It is therefore not trivial to study how they are used, especially when training on them has been, in most cases, autodidactic. In this regard, the subject of media competence arises as a set of skills, abilities, attitudes, and aptitudes that all people should possess to use and produce information in a critical and active way, in a communicational ecosystem that is increasingly reticulated, overloaded, and full of pseudo-content and misinformation. The current study, with an exploratory nature and quantitative design, analyzes the level of media competence of 1676 students and 524 professors from universities in Spain, Portugal, Brazil, and Venezuela. Among the emerging findings is evidence that the level of technological knowledge and interaction, linked to digital skills, is not only dependent on age, which contradicts the theories of “digital natives” and “migrants.” This research also reveals that, in general, the levels of media competence do not exceed the medium-low scale in both analyzed groups, when aspects such as language, technology, interaction, production and dissemination, ideology and values, and esthetics are taken into account. These results reveal that the university is not exempt from the social exclusion generated by the lack of media, digital, and information skills, coinciding with the results for Spain of the Digital literacy and education: country reports on the need to reduce the digital divide, which does not necessarily occur for age or geographical reasons. Resumen Paulatinamente las pantallas han comenzado a ser parte de nuestro quehacer, convirtiéndose en la actividad que más ocupa nuestras horas de actividad diaria. Por ello no resulta baladí estudiar de qué manera son utilizadas, sobre todo cuando la formación sobre las mismas ha sido, en la mayoría de los casos, autodidáctica. En esta línea surge la competencia mediática, como un conjunto de destrezas, habilidades, actitudes y aptitudes que todas las personas deberían poseer para consumir y producir información de manera crítica y activa, en un ecosistema comunicacional cada vez más reticular, sobresaturado y repleto de pseudo-contenidos y desinformación. En este trabajo, de naturaleza exploratoria y diseño cuantitativo, se analiza el nivel de competencia mediática de 1676 estudiantes y 524 profesores de universidades de España, Portugal, Brasil y Venezuela. Entre los resultados emergentes se demuestra que el nivel de conocimientos y de interacción tecnológicos, vinculado a las competencias digitales, no depende únicamente de la edad, lo que contradice las teorías de los «nativos» y «migrantes» digitales. Este estudio también revela que, en general, los niveles de competencia mediática no supera la escala medio-bajo en ambos colectivos de análisis, si se tienen en cuenta aspectos como lenguaje, tecnología, interacción, producción y difusión, ideología y valores, y estética. Estos resultados revelan que la universidad no está exenta de la exclusión social que genera la carencia de aptitudes mediáticas, digitales e informativas, coincidiendo con los resultados correspondientes a España del informe Digital literacy and education: Country reports sobre la necesidad de reducir la brecha digital, la cual no necesariamente ocurre por razones etarias o geográficas.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maboleba Agnes Kolobe ◽  
Lifelile Matsoso

This paper provides a critical overview of the theoretical and practical questions that prevail in the teaching, learning, and assessment of learners from diverse linguistic backgrounds in Lesotho.  It investigates how far exclusion of minority languages affects both assessment and/or educational development of learners whose mother tongue is not Sesotho but other minority languages spoken in Lesotho. The paper advances a research-evidenced argument that the poor performance of students from such backgrounds is indicative of marginalisation and discrimination of such learners due to their language background. A constructivist qualitative study was adopted through use of focus group discussions with 246 learners and 142 teachers in 23 schools located in Botha Bothe, Mohale’s Hoek, Qacha’s Nek and Quthing districts in Lesotho. These places were selected based on their predominance of minority languages. The findings revealed diminutive if not absolute non-recognition of minority languages in teaching, learning, and assessment of learners from this linguistic background. Therefore, the study concludes that linguistically discriminative curriculum, teaching and learning and assessment educational practices can reasonably be associated with   poor performance of learners. Based on these findings, the paper recommends that Lesotho’s education system should respect and embrace existence of national minority languages. Again, the curriculum, its implementation and more importantly assessment should not be divorced from linguistic background of learners.


Multilingua ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (6) ◽  
pp. 663-684
Author(s):  
Tuuli From

AbstractInstitutional education traditionally entails a premise of language separation. This article aims to analyse language management through spatial ideologies and practices as interconnected manifestations of language policies. Informed by post-structural theorisation, the analysis draws on ethnographic data produced at a co-located campus of Finnish- and Swedish-speaking monolingual schools in Finland and in a Sweden Finnish bilingual school in Sweden. In Finland, the two national languages, Finnish and Swedish, are separated in institutional education, although some of the monolingual Finnish- and Swedish-speaking schools share school facilities. In Sweden, education in one of the national minority languages, Finnish, is organised mainly in a few Sweden Finnish bilingual schools. The findings indicate that language separation in education is constructed as spatial ideologies and negotiated in the spatial practices of schools. Particularly in the context of Swedish in Finland, a spatial ideology promoting separation as a means for protecting language was reproduced. In Sweden, the protection of Finnish in the bilingual institution was under constant negotiation and embedded in the daily spatial practices rather than articulated as a spatial ideology. Linguistic hierarchies and their connections to national language policies become evident when analysing the spatial orders of educational institutions.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Heuschkel Heuschkel

The European Commission is funding the project “European Language Equality” and next to 52 other partners, Wikimedia Deutschland is part of this partner consortium. The project is aiming to address the challenge that not all 24 official EU languages or the regional and minority languages in Europe have the same digital support. In order to achieve a state in which all languages have the technological support necessary for them to continue to exist and prosper in the digital age, the project partners are preparing a convincing agenda and roadmap on how to get there by 2030.  The Wikimedia movement, consisting of volunteers and organizations whose daily business is dealing with languages and language technology, is a major stakeholder for the language technology community. In order to know what it will take to get to a state of full digital equality we want the project consortium to know the pains, challenges, wishes and needs of the volunteers and communities keeping the multi-language environment of Europe alive everyday.  This lightning talk will give a short introduction to this European project and present a survey that is used to collect needs, hopes and challenges from the language technology community. We are hoping that with this the communities perspective on digital language equality will influence future programs, projects, funding and structures on an European level. 


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