Notes for LG102, Intro Sociolinguistics University of Essex, Prof. Peter L.

Patrick Week 18, Winter term

Language Shift, Language Death and Language Rights

These notes briefly introduce some key concepts of language shift and loss leading to language death. Language death inevitably brings up issues of linguistic human rights, since it typically occurs in situations of cultural pressure, including but not limited to discrimination against linguistic minorities. I wont try to address linguistic human rights (LHR) here, but rather link you to another introductory page I have created on this topic. Please also see other links at the bottom of this page, and readings from the coursepage. Language shift: when a community who share a native language abandon it, and collectively shift to speaking another one instead. o This goes also for dialect: dialect shift is a case of language shift. Language shift is always preceded by multilingualism: you cant shift to a new language unless you learn to speak it. o But societal multilingualism does not always lead immediately to language shift: it can be a stable condition. Two kinds of questions structural and social can be asked about language shift by sociolinguists: o What effects does language shift have on the structures of the languages involved? On the structure of the target language (L2, the language being shifted to)? On the structure of the source language (L1, the language being shifted away from)? o What information (social, linguistic, cultural) is needed in order to predict language shift? Language shift can happen rapidly or slowly. o Caribbean Creole languages developed within a century, even less, from African and European languages. Most African languages were lost in 1-2 generations under the catastrophic conditions of slavery, though traces of a few remained for 350 years until the late 20th C.

o Scots Gaelic was outlawed in Scotland after the 1745 Jacobite rebellion (when the Scots with Charles Stuart invaded England). Its been in decline ever since. o The numbers of bilingual speakers (when a language is in later stages of slow decline, this number is typically larger than the number of people who remain monolingual speakers of it) show this: Year 1831 1931 1991 Number of Scotland c. 136, c. 81, c. 66, bilingual Gaelic/English speakers, 000 000 000

(These figures & the next set dont quite square up both represent educated guesses in the early years)

o Gaelic allowed back in some schools in 1918, revived since 1958. Survives today mainly in religion, folklore and folk medicine, traditional occupations (farming, fishing, crafts), storytelling & singing.

Numbers of monolingual Gaelic speakers and Gaelic/English bilinguals, Scotland, 1806 to 2001
Year 1806 1808 1881 1891 1901 1911 1921 1931 1951 1961 1971 1981 1991 2001 Total numbe r of speakers 297 823 289 798 231 594 210 677 202 700 183 998 148 950 129 419 93 269 80 978 88 892 79 307 65 978 58 652 Number of monolingual speakers No data No data No data 43 738 28 106 18 400 9 829 6 716 2 178 974 477 No data No data No data Combined share in population, Scotland 18,5% 22,9% 6,2% 6,3% 5,1% 4,3% 3,5% 2,9% 2,2% 1,5% 1,7% 1,6% 1,35% 1,2% (from Skutnabb-Kangas 2005, #8)

Language shift is not a new phenomenon. It has been going on for all of recorded history. Whenever two cultures/populations with different languages come in intense contact, shift is a possibility. o Typically those who shift are the weaker group, but

o sometimes it is the more powerful one who shifts.

The Anglo-Saxons and Vikings: Case study of Language Shift

Around 450 AD, the Anglo-Saxons followed the Romans who had left very little spoken or written Latin in the wild illiterate country of Britain. The Vikings, who spoke older forms of Norwegian and Danish, invaded parts of the British Isles (and N France) later, from c. 787 AD on. The Normans, descended from Vikings in France, came still later: 1066. o (Launch BBC The Ages of English timeline well use only Acts 1-2-3) www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/launch_tl_ages_english.s html

Act 1: The Anglo-Saxons

The Romans are gone not much Latin spoken when the Angles, Saxons and Jutes arrive. o (click on the Shield in Act I for background to the narrative) They bring their own vernacular, which competes with the native Celtic languages. They also bring missionaries, c.600 AD, with writing and a strong Latin tradition o which gets used to spell & write Anglo-Saxon words. (click on the Globe in Act I for overview of writing) o So besides vernacular borrowing from Latin, higher, literate forms emerge too o (click on the Bomb to see exs. of both everyday and religious borrowings) o (click on the Microphone to hear and see an excerpt from Beowulf in Old English, and o ...to view an illustration of the script used by scribes of the day). Also try the Joker and the Bottle in this and other Acts for various panels of info.

Act 2: The Danes/Vikings come

They arrive in c.787, speaking Old Norse, and defeat the AngloSaxons. o (Click on the Shield make sure youve gone to Act 2! for the Danelaw, and the ups and downs of conflict between the Vikings and Anglo-Saxons) This map shows the main routes taken and areas settled in the British Isles and Ireland o www.bbc.co.uk/schools/vikings/invasion/index.shtml Both speak similar Germanic languages: o West Germanic for Anglo-Saxons, North Germanic for the Vikings. o Find both on the family tree of Indo-European (note that it favours English! & doesnt show all members) Words for everyday items in Old Norse replaced similar ones in Old English, so we can see how closely they lived together o unlike the divide between Latin- or French-speakers and English-speakers in Act 3. (The Globe discusses Scandinavian influence on placeand person-names) (The Bomb gives exs. of the many ordinary words borrowed in this process) In Britain the Vikings were strongest in those areas that retain Celtic languages today: o Ireland, the Western Isles and the North of Scotland but also in the North of England. o This map shows the general extent of Scandinavian placenames in the Danelaw: http://www.viking.no/e/england/danelaw/ekartdanelaw.htm o This one shows individual spots around York, or Jorvik as it was then known (red J, bottom right): www.viking.no/e/england/york/scan_settlements_in_jorv ik_m.html (The Joker plays and shows an insult from the Battle of Maldon, nearby in Essex.) (This link gives another version of the same lines, plus pictures, and discusses the Battle between the Viking leader Sweyn Forkbeard, son of King Harald Bluetooth, and English Byrhtno.) The Vikings kept their language for centuries, then shifted to and influenced the evolving English language.

Act 3: The Normans

The Vikings also went to northern coastal France, as this map shows: http://www.viking.no/e/france/place_name_map.html o where they eventually became bilingual & then shifted to French Normans < Norse-men (= North-men). They brought Norman French when they (with their leader William) conquered England in 1066. It remained the court language for 400 years, influencing English. o Norman French was a vernacular spoken language, but also a language of power William the Conqueror named French-speakers to top posts. (The Shield describes these developments) o Latin is the Church language, a high literate variety. So a few people (churchmen) may have been trilingual, though more often people would have been bilingual: Fr/En, or La/Fr. o Words from both Latin & French came into English, though at a high-status level (The Bomb gives exs. of such borrowed words from domains of power and might) o So, a very different kind of borrowing from what happened earlier with Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse. A more detailed comparison of the two borrowing patterns is given here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/trail/conquest/afte r_viking/legacy_vikings_04.shtml These Norman invaders soon became bilingual, and ultimately monolingual, speakers of English, shifting yet again. Of course, o Those who stayed in France remained monolingual speakers of French, not learning English, and o The Vikings who stayed in Scandinavia remained speakers of N Germanic languages, which evolved into modern Norwegian, Danish, etc. o So there was no language death for the Vikings original languages they continued to be spoken, passed on, and evolve.

End of Case Study

Case Study of Language Shift: Chinook (Jargon)

o See ChinookCase.htm

Language Death
Language shift leading to language death is the problem nowadays. Language death is the extreme case: the complete disappearance of a language. o Most commonly a gradual process spanning several generations. o Sometimes a result of genocide, the sudden elimination of an entire population.

Example of language death by genocide: Australian Aboriginal languages

o Over 350 languages were spoken when Capt. Cook landed in 1770 perhaps twice that number!. o 200 years later, only 90 survived as viable languages. 70 of those are threatened by extinction in the near future. Something is known of another 100 or so. o Only 10% of Aboriginal people still speak native languages. o Only 8 languages have more than 1,000 speakers 45 languages have only 10 to 100 speakers not enough to ensure survival. o Wikipedia has a decent overview of the languages: o http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Aboriginal_language s o More information on Western Australian languages near the Kimberley region (discussed in Week 17): o http://coombs.anu.edu.au/WWWVLPages/AborigPages/LAN G/WA/contents.htm

Example of language death by genocide: Tasmania

Tasmania was first contacted by the Dutch captain Abel Tasman in 1642, later sighted by Capt. Cook (1777), and settled by the English in 1803.

The unique native population of about 8,000 people lived there for 35,000 years. The sea rose 10,000 years ago and cut them off from Australia. This map (enlarge) shows the distribution of native groups on first European contact: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasmanian_Aborigine They spoke c. 10 distinct languages, and lived in groups of c. 40-50. Between 1802-1833, disease and genocide by English settlers reduced this population to about 300, less than 4%. o By 1832 the last free Tasmanians were put in a concentration camp by the British, while fugitives were killed for sport by bounty hunters. Of the 300 resettled, 250 had died by 1847. By 1876 all had died, except for cases of intermarriage. o Only place and people names remain of the Tasmanian language today. However, some 10,000 people may have Aboriginal Tasmanian heritage, mostly by descent from two women who had children with European men.

Linguistic genocide = Linguicide

See definition at TerraLingua by Tove Skutnabb-Kangas Sometimes too, massive killing takes place but survivors remain, o who feel forced to abandon their language/culture because it is dangerous to be identifiable as a group member. o Several languages once spoken in El Salvador & Honduras fit this category Cacaopera, Pipil, Lenca. o The indigenous speakers were persecuted and killed by death squads.

Tove Skutnabb-Kangas presentation on Linguistic and Cultural Genocide

The following points refer to specific slides from the powerpoint presentation above, made as part of the Annual Lecture Series on Language and Human Rights at Essex in Nov 2005. Speaker Tove Skutnabb-Kangas addressed the topic of (Linguistic and cultural) Genocide in education signals lack of Linguistic Human Rights But

why no discussion?" The entire presentation can be seen online here. The numbers below select specific slides to illustrate the points of this LG102 lecture go to the PPT file and go to that slide number. Or read the whole thing! 1-3: Intro, themes Illustrations of language loss: o 6-7: Sweetgrass Nation in Ontario, Canada o 8: Decline of Gaelic speakers in Scotland o 10-11: Which languages survive? o 12, 14: Necessity for LHR for language protection. o 20: Size of speech communities o 23: Demographic dominance of a few languages o 27-28: Predictions for the near future Language Death vs Language Murder: o 32-35: Which paradigm? o 36-39: Killer languages defined o 42, 46, 49: Linguistic genocide o 68-70: But is it intentional? Indian Schools in Canada: o 76-77, 80: Children were forcibly assimilated, o 85-6-7-8-89: Using schools to eliminate culture & language. o 121: Most minority & indigenous participates in committing linguicide. Further examples of language death by genocide: It o North American Indian (ie Native American) languages spoken in the USA: http://www.ncela.gwu.edu/expert/faq/20natlang.html lists languages w/estimates of speakers 1. Table by name (see Chinook, Chehalis) 2. Table by number (Navajo vs everything else) o See MLA Map of Language Diversity in the USA at http://www.mla.org/map_single Select Other Native North American Languages (other than Navajo), and update o Darin Howe and Eung-Do Cooks survey article Canadian Native Languages.pdf documents the numbers of Aboriginal languages above the US border See map, p3 note Salish, Athabaskan languages we spoke about in the Chinook (Jkargon) case.

works.

Dialect loss and death

o A similar problem, similar causes, but because of language standardization, even fewer people respect dialects and local cultures. School and university, and social/geographic mobility, are the main culprits here. England is a dialect-hostile nation, probably because of its historical investment in Standard English. 1994: Minister for education (Tory govt.) announced that all children should speak Standard English. Also linguaphobic: decline in Foreign Language study, year on year; statement by Minister for Home Affairs that all immigrants should learn and speak in English rather than native languages.

Explanations and Solutions

Reasons for decline of languages/cultures worldwide (Brenzinger 1997) Main one: attitudes, both internal and external, reinforced/caused by Contrasts in power/status/economic opportunity b/w speakers of A and B Main vehicle is schools and higher education, supported by mass media. o See below for list of factors thought to promote or retard language death. o Whats needed is not a subtractive approach to multilingualism: I.e., To learn a new (e.g. standard) language you have to stop using an old one (dialect or immigrant language) o ...But an additive approach: Multilingual maintenance is easily possible given positive attitudes and proper instruction. o Schools should help in the learning of national standard varieties, but not seek to denigrate or replace dialects or minority languages. o The solution to discrimination (racism, sexism) is not to become like the majority this is equally true for language. Attack discrimination, not dialects/languages.

Multilingualism and Language Shift and Death: Summary

Multilingualism is always present before cases of gradual language death. o Movement from language-choice-by-audience

to language-choice-by-context o is a pretty good predictor of shift. o As long as people have certain individuals to whom they habitually use a minority language, it is unlikely to be lost. o When the situation changes such that they code-switch in some contexts, to all speakers, shift appears to be inevitable. Language shift and death is typically focused on as a minoritylanguage phenomenon, o though the processes dont only work that way.

Three schooling/policy approaches:

1. Stamp out nonstandard dialects/minority languages. Psychologically, socially and morally wrong, and hopefully impossible. 2. Teach bidialectalism in standard/non-standard codes, and encourage code-switching into the standard when it is considered socially appropriate. Only works for speaking, not writing, and even then, Only when people want to and can assimilate and It doesnt change prejudices. 3. Teach linguistic tolerance instead of promoting standard languages. Then you dont have to change anyones speech, just social attitudes

More Online Materials:

More on the language situation in Papua New Guinea we encountered last week (teaching notes by ML Landweer): See coursepage under Week 17. o Size: is there safety in numbers? o Multilingualism as the norm in Papua New Guinea o What factors act as safe-guards in the case of some PNG small languages? o What factors can help to predict language maintenance or language death (=ethnolinguistic vitality)? o Foundation for Endangered Languages: http://www.ogmios.org/ o Linguistic Society of America, 1995 statement on Language Rights: www.lsadc.org/ (see the site map) o Links on Tasmanian history and indigenous culture:

o www.tasmanianaboriginal.com.au/index.htm History links from a Tasmanian Aboriginal organisation. o www.justpacific.com/tasmania/first.html Summary of Tasmanian history: early contacts with Europeans o More on Native American and Heritage Languages in the USA at http://www.ncela.gwu.edu/resabout/culture/ o My page on Linguistic Human Rights: A sociolinguistic introduction (2005): o http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~patrickp/lhr/linguistichumanright s.htm