Language Endangerment and the Need for Technology for Language Empowerment: Case Study of the Brahui language in Balochistan

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-50
Author(s):  
Kinza Alizai
Keyword(s):  
Language Policy ◽  
Digital Divide ◽  
Digital Technology ◽  
Educational Policies ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Language Policies ◽  
Language Endangerment ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
Language Survival

Diaspora and indigenous speech communities are under the threat of extinction in Balochistan. Local inhabitants with a lower economic and commercial value symbolize cultural and ethnic genocide in western Pakistan. In my study, I investigate the scope of technology for the documentation and maintenance of the Brahui language in the province of Balochistan. Also, I discuss how language policy and the digital divide are creating unfamiliar pedagogical, socio-cultural and linguistic practices, along with putting minority speech communities in danger of losing their identity and bringing about linguistic extinction. Drawing on the work of critical theorists, perceptions of indigenous Brahui community are recorded to understand the influence of digital technology for language survival. The study identifies that digital divide and flawed educational policies in Balochistan are potent instruments of Brahui endangerment. I call for inclusive and unbiased language policies and uniform access to technology for linguistic empowerment of the Brahui speech community in Balochistan.

scholarly journals An Analysis of an EFL Teachers' Guide: A Case Study

2011 ◽  
Vol 2011 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmad Nazari
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Policy ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Language Policies ◽  
Policy Documents ◽  
Classroom Activities ◽  
Teaching Objectives ◽  
Efl Teachers

This paper is an attempt to analyse one of the documents which may affect the classroom activities of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers, namely teachers' guides. It also explores the context at which the document is aimed and critiques how EFL teachers are advised to teach as well as how EFL is taught. As such, the paper stands where critical discourse analysis and language policy come together in the study of language policies in education. The teachers' guide chosen and the analysis carried out here are not necessarily concerned with their representativeness and typicality but with the opportunity they provide to the researchers and teachers to learn about such language policy documents and how language and language teaching objectives are represented in them. The issues raised in this paper will have relevance to the EFL teachers' guides and EFL education in other contexts, as these issues are likely to be true of other EFL milieux.

scholarly journals Lithuanian language discourses and family language policies of Lithuanian families in Sweden: A case study

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 126-142
Author(s):  
Frederik H. Bissinger
Keyword(s):  
Language Policy ◽  
Language And Identity ◽  
Language Policies ◽  
Family Language Policy ◽  
Ethnic Language ◽  
The Family ◽  
External Threat ◽  
Discourse Strategies ◽  
Family Language

Lithuanian language discourses and family language policies of Lithuanian families in Sweden: A case studyThis case study shares first insights of the family language policy of a Lithuanian family in Sweden. It identifies Lithuanian language discourses that might affect this policy and analyses discourse strategies applied by the family members. The aim is to shed some new light on the negotiation processes of family language policies that either support the maintenance of an ethnic language as the means of intra-family communication in immigrant contexts or, conversely, work against it. Applying a linguistic ethnographical approach, the study indicates that in this case the family language policy is mostly shaped by the mother in a protective and monolingual way in order to foster the maintenance of the Lithuanian heritage in anticipation of an external threat for Lithuanian language and identity. Litewskie dyskursy językowe a polityki językowe litewskich rodzin w Szwecji. Studium przypadkuNiniejszy artykuł przedstawia wstępne uwagi analityczne dotyczące polityki językowej litewskiej rodziny mieszkającej w Szwecji. Autor identyfikuje litewskie dyskursy językowe, które mogą mieć wpływ na jej politykę językową, i analizuje strategie dyskursu stosowane przez jej członków. Celem studium jest nowe spojrzenie na procesy negocjacji rodzinnych polityk językowych (family language policies), które mogą być pomocne w utrzymaniu ojczystego języka jako środka komunikacji w rodzinach emigrantów lub temu nie sprzyjać. Przedstawione badania opierają się na metodach etnografii lingwistycznej (linguistic ethnography) i wykazują, że w tym przypadku rodzinna polityka językowa jest kształtowana głównie przez matkę, jest jednojęzyczna i ma charakter ochronny – jest nakierowana na zachowanie litewskiego dziedzictwa kulturowego w związku z przewidywanymi zagrożeniami zewnętrznymi dla języka litewskiego i tożsamości litewskiej.

Language policies and English worldwide

English Today ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 61-63
Author(s):  
Kingsley Bolton
Keyword(s):  
Language Policy ◽  
Whole Language ◽  
Child Language ◽  
Endangered Languages ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Language Policies ◽  
Language Practice ◽  
Large Measure ◽  
Independent Components ◽  
The Third

This is a weighty volume, and one which provides a very useful addition to the Cambridge Handbook series, which previously has covered such topics as phonology, code-switching, child language, endangered languages, sociolinguistics and pragmatics. The volume comprises a total of 30 chapters, which in turn are grouped into five constituent parts. Part I sets out ‘Definition and principles’, Part II deals with ‘Language policy at the macrolevel’, Part III discusses language policies in ‘Non-governmental domains’, Part IV tackles ‘Globalization and modernization’, and, finally, Part V focuses on ‘Regional and thematic issues’. Bernard Spolsky's opening chapter on ‘What is language policy?’ clears the discursive and theoretical space for much that follows, with Spolsky cogently resolving the often confusing issue of where language ‘policy’ ends and ‘planning’ begins thus: I find it appropriate then to name the field as a whole ‘language policy’, and see it as made up of three inter-related but independent components [...] The first of these is the actual language practices of the members of the speech community […] The second component, formed in large measure by the first and confirming its influence, is made up of the values assigned by members of a speech community to each variety and variant and their beliefs about the importance of these values. […] The third component is what used to be called ‘planning’ and what I prefer to call ‘management’, efforts by some members of a speech community who have or believe they have authority over other members to modify their language practice, such as by forcing or encouraging them to use a different variety or even a different variant. (5)

scholarly journals ‘Ikke snakke norsk?’ – Transnational adolescents and negotiations of family language policy explored through family interview

Multilingua ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (6) ◽  
pp. 653-674 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Antonina Obojska
Keyword(s):  
Language Policy ◽  
Interview Data ◽  
Language Policies ◽  
Crucial Importance ◽  
Family Language Policy ◽  
The Family ◽  
Family Interview ◽  
Family Language ◽  
Scholarly Attention

Abstract Multilingual families and their language policies have attracted considerable attention in recent sociolinguistic work. Adding to this line of research, this article focuses on a case study of a transnational Polish family living in Norway and investigates the role adolescent children may play in the formation of family language policies. To this end the article analyses stances towards language practices at home taken in an interaction between the father and one of the adolescent daughters of the family. The article argues that the perspectives of adolescent children may be of crucial importance for the establishment of family language policies and thus deserve scholarly attention. Methodologically, the article draws attention to family interviews as a useful tool in generating sociolinguistic data for studies of Family Language Policies and advocates an interactional approach to interview data.

scholarly journals An exploration of the effects of language policy in education in a contemporary Puerto Rican society

2016 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 85
Author(s):  
Mirta Maldonado-Valentín
Keyword(s):  
Language Policy ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
Medium Of Instruction ◽  
Official Language ◽  
Language Policies ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Grade Levels ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
The Impact

During the Spanish regimen, Puerto Rican education was limited and restricted to Spanish language as the medium of instruction. It was not until the U.S. colonization of the island that public education was introduced. As a result, English replaced Spanish as medium of instruction in the new educational system. Immediately after, Puerto Rican elitists and politicians ignited a political movement against using English (Algren de Gutierrez, 1987), resulting in a language battle fought through a series of educational language policies. In the end, policymakers enacted a language policy that reinstated Spanish as the official language of Puerto Rico’s education system. Consequently, policymakers also strengthened the use of Spanish instruction in Puerto Rican schools and universities while English was taught as a subject through all grade levels (Canino, 1981). Thus, this policy secured the island’s status as a “monolingual Spanish speaking society”. In addition, the enactment of this language policy also legitimized English as a de jure second official language, with the possibility of recognizing Puerto Rico as a “bilingual speaking society”. This paper discusses the impact of these language policies on the use of Spanish and English in education and presents a case study of Guaynabo City to exemplify the effects of these language policies on a contemporary Puerto Rican society and its acceptance of or resistance to becoming an English-speaking society.

Exploring discourse on globalizing English

English Today ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Onysko
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Julia Kristeva ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Semiotic System ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
Linguistic Unit ◽  
Linguistic Units

ABSTRACTA case study of discourse on anglicisms in German.“By recognizing our uncanny strangeness, we shall neither suffer from it nor enjoy it from the outside. The foreigner is within me, hence we are all foreigners. If I am a foreigner, there are no foreigners.” (Julia Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves (1991)).Is Kristeva's dissolution of the notion ‘foreign’ also applicable to language? The nature of language as a semiotic system of arbitrarily bound units of meaning and form determines the essential foreignness of signifier and signified. As such, every linguistic unit is indeed intrinsically foreign on the level of designation and, thus, there is no foreign language. On the surface of human communication, however, incomprehensibility among speakers can emerge as a criterion of foreignness. The perception of the foreign in language is particularly tied to situations of contact between different language-cultural areas. Such contact can occur internally in a multilingual speaker or can be observed externally as happening in the speech community. In both ways, crucial to language contact is a perceived intertwining of linguistic units from at least two distant, i.e. incomprehensible, codes culturally rooted in diverse speech communities.

scholarly journals Digitalisation and the foundational economy: A digital opportunity or a digital divide for less-developed regions?

2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (6) ◽  
pp. 451-467
Author(s):  
Laura Reynolds ◽  
Dylan Henderson ◽  
Chen Xu ◽  
Laura Norris
Keyword(s):  
Digital Divide ◽  
Digital Technology ◽  
Technology Use ◽  
Sustainable Growth ◽  
Digital Infrastructure ◽  
Policy Discussion

The foundational economy’s heightened traction in academic and policy discussion stems in part from its potential to mitigate challenges faced by less-developed regions. While supporting foundational sectors may contribute to inclusive and sustainable growth, we question whether digitalisation can enable these aims. Through a case study of Wales, we point to the differences in digital capability of foundational and non-foundational businesses in urban and rural parts of the region. We show that while investment in digital infrastructure and digital technology use may support the foundational economy, digital barriers risk countering the benefits of its sectors’ embeddedness and exacerbating spatial divides.

Multilingual policies as dystopia: From less to more desirable futures in education

2021 ◽  
pp. 147821032110140
Author(s):  
Sandro R Barros ◽  
Darshana Devarajan
Keyword(s):  
Language Policy ◽  
Analytical Method ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Territorial Disputes ◽  
Language Policies ◽  
Ethical Problems ◽  
Human Desire ◽  
Bear Witness ◽  
Point Of Departure

In ‘Literature and Life’, Deleuze remarks that all literature manifests as delirium, and, as such, the destiny of literature is to play itself out between two poles that create and reflect life back to itself: what the human desires, and the constant changes life imposes onto us. Taking Deleuze’s statement as a point of departure concerning the power of social fiction, this article mobilizes the dystopian imagination as a tool to evaluate what language policies do as they channel human desire to shape linguistic practices. Specifically, this article explores the extent to which the literary dystopian lens can help us plot more desirable futures for multilingualism in education. Through a critical fabulation about India’s three-language policy’s effects in schools, we bear witness to this language policy’s disciplinarian action, which reinforces linguistic hierarchies and territorial disputes present in this nation’s history. Indeed, decisions on policies meant to assist linguistically minoritized students have often rested on complicated assumptions about what language means. These assumptions operate under liberal and neoliberal ideologies that commodify and narrow citizens’ linguistic choices, thereby framing one’s authority over language as something that exists outside the human mind. By approaching India’s three-language policy as a futuristically fabulated case study, we reflect on the potentiality of dystopian narratives to function as an analytical method and a critical lens to anticipate ethical problems in language policies’ design.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document