A Discourse Analytic Approach to Practices of Hawaiian Language Revitalization in the Mass Media

Scholars of language policy and planning (LPP) have recently started using ethnographic and discourse-analytic methods. Examining the collaborative sense-making activity of language users can shed light on how they construct their version or versions of reality by using semiotic resources, creating intertextual links, and referring to language ideologies. This study investigates an under-researched area in LPP: spoken discourse in media talk, specifically in media involved in indigenous language revitalization in Hawaiʻi. Using audio recordings of Ka Leo Hawaiʻi (The Hawaiian Voice) broadcast from the 1970s for over 25 years, the study explores the multilingual practices of the hosts, the guests, and the call-in listeners of the translingual contact zone of this Hawaiian language radio show by analyzing these participants' metapragmatic comments on the use of English and their bivalent utterances.

How the Perceived Language Status of Brunca Affects Resource Allocation in Costa Rica

Beginning with the conquest and colonization of the land that now comprises Costa Rica, the Indigenous peoples and their cultures have suffered great losses. One of the greatest losses is to their languages. One language in particularly grave danger is Brunca. While Indigenous languages are being acknowledged worldwide and within Costa Rica, the Costa Rican government has not provided the necessary resources to maintain them. This chapter incorporates recent field research on Brunca's language vitality into a discussion on the disconnect between government rhetoric and the actual linguistic situation of Brunca.

The Origin and History of the Extinct Contact-Induced Language, Matagi

This chapter attempts to find how the Matagi hunters of Tohoku region in Japan contacted the Ainu hunters and how the Matagi language absorbed the Ainu vocabulary. The Ainu hunters contacted the Japanese hunters there on a routine basis because the Ainu people settled down in Tohoku region before the Old Japanese period and have lived there since. The Japanese hunters borrowed some Ainu words necessary for living, hunting, and rituals in the mountains after the Middle Japanese period. The term Matagi, however, might have been employed long before the Middle Japanese period. During the Middle Japanese period the Yamato state came to dominate the entire Tohoku area. Although some Ainu adjusted to the Japanese living environment there, the rest probably escaped up toward Hokkaido. Hence, the Ainu people became less and less in Tohoku region. Eventually the Ainu words remained mainly in the Matagi language, although they are never spoken again.

Language Shift and Maintenance in Uttarakhand, a Hilly State of India

Several lesser known and tribal languages of India are rapidly choosing to shift to local and official languages in educational, social, and even personal domains. This preference of the ‘other' language is aided by social, political, and economic factors that often devise the ‘other' as dominant. This chapter looks at the extent of language shift with respect to two communities living in the state of Uttarakhand in India and speaking respectively named endangered languages, Jad and Raji, in the light of these factors. The authors examine how language contact that is causal in language shift is changing their linguistic make up. In the Jad community, Hindi and Garhwali are the major dominating languages, and their presence can be seen in all the domains (100% in education, 35% in religious activities, and even 25% at home). In the Raji community, the usurping languages are Kumaoni and Hindi, and their presence in education is 100%, in religious activities is 45%, and 35% at the home front.

Selective Language Maintenance in Multilingual Malaysia

Aiming to understand the phenomena of language maintenance and shift in Malaysia, this chapter focuses on efforts by Penang's Chinese community to maintain Penang Hokkien alongside other Chinese community languages. The Malaysian Government has explicitly allowed the teaching of Mandarin Chinese in Chinese-medium schools, which resulted in the reduced use of Penang Hokkien and other Chinese community languages among the Malaysian Chinese community. Such a situation has caused sociolinguistic realignment in many Malaysian Chinese families, including in Penang, and raised questions about the survival of these languages in Malaysian society. Based on interviews with participants from Penang's Chinese community, the findings reveal that although past studies have demonstrated a decline in the use of Chinese community languages, the participants expressed their willingness to regularly use them in their daily life in various domains. Despite the announced desuetude of these languages, participants consistently used them and indicated their determination to pass on to the next generation.

Persons and Address Terms in Melanesia

This chapter deals with vocative and address terms of the several Melanesian languages and tries to investigate the grammatical and sociolinguistic characteristics of them. This study is a contrastive study of the six languages which are spoken in Papua New Guinea (Amele, Bel, and Tok Pisin) and Vanuatu (South Efate, Nguna, and Bislama). This study tries to clarify the characteristics of their lexicon (mainly kinship and address terms) and usages of personal pronouns and their verb inflections. Generally, the sample languages are rich in usages of these terms (kinship, personal pronouns, vocatives) whereas creole languages have limited usages and borrowed from English lexicon. Finally, this study claims that there are several rules of defining social relations and their grammatical forms.

Critical Language Pedagogy in Scotland

Critical language pedagogy involves addressing the relationships between power, identity, language, and education. In recent decades, there has been an increase in the understanding of the importance of language revitalization, and many minority and endangered language groups are choosing to teach through the medium of non-dominant languages. This qualitative study looks at the role of critical language pedagogy of teachers within the Gaelic Medium Education (GME) system of schooling in Scotland. Following a phenomenological approach, the researcher interviewed three GME teachers about their backgrounds and experiences. Using closed-coding and critical discourse analysis (CDA), a number of themes emerged. All three participants, despite having had limited formal education in the areas of second language acquisition and critical theory, demonstrated an understanding of critical language pedagogy. With GME seeing an increase in enrollment, there is still much to be done in teacher education in Scotland with regard to critical consciousness.

Australian Aboriginal Languages

The present chapter describes the decline and revitalisation of Australian Aboriginal languages—also called Australian languages. As preliminaries, it looks at the following: (i) a brief history of Aboriginal Australians, (ii) degrees of language viability, (iii) current situation of Australian languages, (iv) value of linguistic heritage, and (v) methods of language revitalisation. It then describes five selected language revitalisation activities, concerning Warrongo, Kaurna, Bandjalang, Thalanyji and Wiradjuri languages. In particular, it provides a detailed account of the Warrongo language revitalisation activity (in which the author has been participating). It finally examines a problem that is frequently encountered in language revitalisation activities: confusion over writing systems. The entire chapter pays careful attention to the changing political climate that surrounds Australian languages and activities for them.

Language Endangerment in Africa

The aim of this chapter is to lay a foundation so as to consider the issue of language endangerment in the world. Approximately 30 years ago, various scholars stated that in the worst-case scenario, 90%–95% of the present living languages of the world would become defunct by the end of the 21st century. The assumption of this argument was that minority languages may become defunct easily. However, in this chapter, this thesis is questioned by taking into account the language situations in Africa where most languages, whether small or large, are vigorously spoken. In African countries, people do not impose majority languages on other people. More importantly, African people in general esteem others because they understand their value to them.

Acquisition and Maintenance of the Indigenous Chamorro Language in the Youngest Generation in Guam

This chapter first provides an overview as to the history and factors that have contributed to a marked decrease in the number of Chamorro language speakers in Guam. Although recent efforts by the Government of Guam as well as community groups have sought to reverse this decrease, there continues to be a decline in the number of Chamorro speakers, especially amongst the youngest generations. In a contemporary context, the chapter will focus on the acquisition, maintenance, and the attitudes toward the Chamorro language among the young generation in Guam. Data collected from 582 participants was statistically analyzed. The results show that 80.4% of participants claimed that they understand the Chamorro language, more or less. However, only 4.5% of them evaluated their speaking ability as very good. Among the participants in our study, only 2.6% acquired Chamorro as their mother language, and 9.8% regularly use the Chamorro language. These results show that the extent of the shift on Guam among the youngest generation to the use of English is statistically large.