Educational materials © for/by Peter L. Patrick. May contain copyright material used for educational purposes. Please respect copyright.
Linguistic Human Rights:
A Sociolinguistic
Introduction
Dept. of Language & Linguistics
University of
Essex
Sociolinguistic typology
There are many sociolinguistic typologies and taxonomies, presumably all devised for a specific function. I assume here that what is relevant is primarily social (e.g. relative power, status or access to resources of different groups) and secondarily (socio-)linguistic (e.g. closeness or perceived closeness of structure between two language varieties in contact, complexity of structure or learnability of a powerful language for speakers of a powerless one, etc.). The purpose is to provide illuminating contrasts between speech communities or societies in terms of the exercise of, and conceptions of, language rights.
Other sorts of models might prove illuminating as well. Peter Trudgill, in a 2002 article on “Linguistic and
social typology” (Chambers, Schilling-Estes & trudgill, eds., Handbook
of Language Variation and Change) which has a very different purpose,
contrasts
o
“High-contact language communities
where contact is stable, long-term and involves child bilingualism...”
o
“High-contact language communities
where contact is short-term and/or involves imperfect language learning by
adults...”, and
o
“Isolated low-contact language
communities” (p.725)
Nancy Hornberger,
in a 1994 discussion of “Literacy and language planning” (from Language and
Education, vol. 8:1-2) cites a distinction made in a UNESCO document
between multilingual nations with
o
“no one
linguistic majority (e.g.
o
“a locally developed lingua franca
(e.g. Swahiliin the East African countries)”
o
“a predominant indigenous language
(e.g. Quechua in
o
“multiple
languages with literary and religious traditions (e.g.
The division made below is my own, and probably in need of critique
and revision – however, it may perhaps serve as a useful stimulus to further
investigations.
Standard language dominance of related
dialects
o This
is a common situation in many areas of the world, esp. the developed world, in
which a standard written language is highly-valued, taught in schools as the
norm, and holds prestige, status and power (though often spoken by a minority
of the population). Such a language may be opposed to historically-related
regional or social dialects, which - though often more widely spoken - are
frequently devalued, unwritten, not taught or actively discouraged in schools,
and denied recognition, status and power. This may result in:
§
Within-country oppression/denial of
·
political
participation in debates, thru media
·
equal access to education/stigma thru
education
·
equal job opportunity
·
urban marginalization of rural groups
·
equal access to essential services
(medical, police)
·
literature
and oral culture in dialects, via
censorship, standardization in publishing and mass media.
§
Frequently, alignment of the dominant
standard with class stratification, race/ethnicity, etc. is achieved through
education & mass media, thus reproducing the dominant social structures.
§
Sometimes this opposition may be
(explicitly or deniably) enforced through language
planning activities: orthography, instrumentalization, standardization, etc.
§
The
historical relatedness of the dialects often means that the representative
speaker groups are either all on the same footing as indigenes (e.g. Han Chinese
dialects in mainland China) or as immigrants (e.g. European- and
African-descent speakers of related standard and Creole anguages in the
Caribbean), or that at least the suboprdinate speaker group has a long local
history (e.g. African Americans in the USA).
Official language dominance of unrelated
languages
o This
too is a common situation in the developed world. It differs from the first in
that, often enough, the subordinate languages in the situation at hand may even
be recognised as standard languages somewhere else, where they may be the
languages of power.
§
Eg, French dominated by English in
Canada, Breton & Norman in France, Spanish in the USA, Basque in Spain,
etc.
§
The subordinate languages are also
frequently languages of (recent) immigration, hence their distant historical
relation, or lack of relation, to the dominant languages.
§
Many of the same points as above may
apply here, too, but also often found are:
·
Restrictions on workplace conversation
·
Restrictions/denial of voting
rights/information
·
Restricted access to other essential
services, esp. court
proceedings; social services
·
Educational
handicap through lack of primary education & literacy instruction in native
languages
Globalization, language death & linguistic
imperialism
o
This is an increasingly common
situation nearly everywhere, in which an external international language usurps
functions, status and power of a locally-established or indigenous one. This
happens both between “linguistic giants” and between “giants and pygmies”, as
the examples indicate.
§
Eg, the global dominance of English,
formerly French, as well as of…
§
Regional “killer languages” such as
Russian, Arabic, Mandarin Chinese…
§
…over both powerful local languages (eg
Hindi or Arabic), and smaller languages of all sorts, resulting in:
§
Development of local dominant languages
in post-colonial countries, either international ones (French in
§
Typically enforced through language planning: orthography,
instrumentalization, standardization
§
Many of the same points as above apply,
but also often
·
Denial of aboriginal land claims,
·
Denial of political association rights,
·
Pressure on group identity (eg, through
enforced language death of Native American languages in the
Linguistic Human
Rights homepage
- Peter L Patrick
homepage
Last revised 2 November
2005