LANE 422 SOCIOLINGUISTICS

1. LANE 422 SOCIOLINGUISTICS Summarized from SOCIOLINGUISTICS An Introduction to Language and Society Peter Trudgill 4thedition. 2000, Prepared by Dr. Abdullah S. Al-Shehri

2. Chapter 7 Language and Nation

3. The Problem of Multilingualism • In many speech communities around the world, many people are either bilingual or multilingual (i.e. they could speak two or more languages with a fair degree of fluency). • This of course is a consequence of the fact that the society in which they live is a multilingual society. • Societal multilingualism is a very widespread phenomenon. • On a world scale, multilingualism is the rule rather than the exception. • The vast majority of the nations of the world have more than one language spoken indigenously within their frontiers. • In some cases, the number of languages spoken in one country may rise into the hundreds.

4. Multilingual Nations • Multilingual nations exist in all parts of the world, and very many examples could be cited. • Difficulties only arise when one attempts to locate a country that is genuinely monolingual. • Most people would accept as true statements to the effect that Germans speak German, and French speak French, and so on. • There are good reasons for this, but the reality of the matter is somewhat different. • Nearly all European countries contain indigenous linguistic minorities. Iceland is the only exception. • In some cases, where the minority is large, the nation-state usually has more than one official language. Examples are Belgium (Dutch/Flemish and French), Switzerland (German, French, Italian and Romansch), and Finland (Finnish and Swedish). • In other cases, where the minority is smaller or less influential, the minority language or languages are unlikely to have official status, and their speakers, out of necessity, will tend to be bilingual. This is what helps to give Europe its outwardly monolingual appearance.

5. Language Minorities and the Problem of Multilingualism • Nearly all European nations are multilingual to a certain extent. • Perhaps the most multilingual of all the countries in Europe is Romania, where in addition to the majority Rumanian language at least fourteen other languages are spoken natively in the country. • Multilingualism on this scale clearly brings problems for governments and others concerned with national organizations of various kinds. • Multilingualism on any scale brings with it problems for individuals and groups alike, especially those who are members of linguistic minorities. • Unlike members of the majority-language groups, minority group members have to acquire proficiency in at least two languages before they can function as full members of the national community in which they live – education being the biggest problem they have to face.

6. The problem of Language Minority and How it has been Treated in Some Parts of the World • Members of a language minority, especially children, may be faced with very considerable difficulties. • This may occur where the two languages involved are not closely related and also, more importantly, where the educational policy of a particular nation is to discourage, or simply ignore, minority languages. • In extreme cases the minority language may be forbidden or disapproved of in school, and children punished or actively discouraged from using it there. • This was formerly true both of Welsh in Wales and Gaelic in Scotland, and was for many years the policy of the Turkish government concerning Kurdish. • One language which has received particularly bad treatment and no attention in Europe is Romany, the originally north-Indian language of the Gypsies.

7. Language is a Symbol of Group Identity • Perhaps the biggest threat for a multilingual nation’s national unity comes from the fact that ‘language’ acts as a symbol of group identity. • Where language is a defining characteristic of a minority ethnic group wanting independence, particularly where other characteristics are not significant, linguistic factors are likely to play an important role in any separatist movement. • This is a result of the fact that language acts as an important symbol of group consciousness and solidarity. • To preserve national unity of multilingual nations, where minority language may be used for political reasons, the state can overcome or minimized this problem either through granting some political independence to linguistic minorities or, less drastically, through adequate and fair educational programs and policies.

8. More on multilingualism as a Problem for National Governments • Many governments regrettably regard as a problem the fact that language can act as a focus of discontent for minorities wanting more power, independence, or annexation by a neighboring state. • Where governments do not regard this as threatening or undesirable, they may well regard linguistic minorities benevolently, or simply ignore them. • In cases where governments regard linguistic minorities as potentially ‘subversive’, they may react very differently and foolishly fail to perceive that if minority language communities are well treated, especially in education, they will be less likely to become dissatisfied. • Nevertheless, these governments’ fears, from their own illiberal and centralist point of view, may often be justified: language loyalty can be a powerful weapon, and has often been manipulated to political advantage.

9. Examples from Europe • Sometimes, a repressed or discouraged minority language is also the language of a possibly antagonistic state. • This has been true of Macedonian in Greece, Slovenian in Italy, and German in France and Italy. • The fear is that language loyalty may prove to be stronger than national loyalty. • One particular European language which has had a history of oppression for reasons of this kind is Catalan. • Catalan is a Romance language which is about as closely related to French as it is to Spanish. It has approximately seven million speakers in Spain – in Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearic Islands – as well as about 250,000 in Roussillon in France, and a very small group in Sardinia.

10. More on the Catalan Problem • Catalonian was the official, administrative written language in Catalonia until that area was annexed by Castile at the beginning of the eighteenth century. • Subsequently, Spanish was introduced by government decree in former Catalan schools. • In 1856, a law was passed which stated that all political documents and legal contract were to be in Spanish. • Liberalization of this policy took place under the Spanish Republic, from 1931 to 1939, and children were being taught again in Catalan to begin their education in Spanish later at the age of ten. • However, under the Franco dictatorship Catalan was once again banned completely from schools, and Chairs of Catalan language and literature at the University of Barcelona were abolished. • Franco government was clearly concerned about what it regarded as separatist tendencies. • In the later years of the Franco regime the situation of Catalan was somewhat relaxed. • In the democratization of Spain in the 1970s, the situation has changed very significantly. Catalan has returned to the domains, in the media and in education, from which it had been banished.

11. Language and National Unity • As we saw earlier, language can be a strong signal of group identity, and anybody attempting to create a unified nation-state will find any signaling of a different identity undesirable or dangerous. • Linguistic subjugation (or unification) is therefore an important strategy in implementing political subjugation (or unification). • The activities of governments, having to do with language, can be described as instances of language planning. • In very many cases activities of this kind can be regarded as both necessary and commendable – for example in countries which are faced with the problem of having to select a national language or languages and, subsequently, of developing and standardizing it/them. • This type of language planning, which decides which role is to be played by which language, is known as status planning.

12. Lingua franca as a Solution to Multilingualism • Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, is a very multilingual area where language problems have been exacerbated because colonial powers drew national frontiers without regard for the geographical distribution of ethnic or linguistic groups. • Communication problems in areas like these are not necessarily so serious as one might think. • In many areas of Sub-Saharan Africa people who belong to different ethnic or linguistic groups are able to communicate with each other quite easily. • This is because they are also usually familiar with other more widely spoken languages such as Swahili in East Africa, Hausa in West Africa, English or French. • Such languages function in such multilingual communities as lingua francas.

13. A Lingua Franca is.. • A language which is used as a means of communication among people who have no native language in common. • Some of the languages which are used in this way in Africa, like English and French, are not indigenous to the area in question and are often learned through formal education. • Many African lingua francas, though, are indigenous, and many have come to be used as such because of the political dominance of their native speakers, or because they were the language of prominent traders in the area, like Swahili in East Africa.

14. In West Africa.. • One of the most important lingua francas which is still used for trading purposes is Hausa. • Hausa is an Afro-Asiatic language spoken originally in the region of Lake Chad in north-central Africa, but it has become so widely known that it is used for trading and other purposes by many millions of speakers in areas such as Ghana, Nigeria and Dahomey.

15. Historically.. • Many languages have spread as lingua francas in the past, only to contract again for reasons of economics or politics. • Greek, for example, became a lingua franca in the ancient world as a result, initially, of Alexander’s military conquests, and was one time used widely from Turkey to Portugal. • Latin was later used as a lingua franca in the western world, mainly as a result of the expansion of the Roman Empire, and later survive as such, in spite of the fact that it had no native speakers, for many centuries. • The original ‘lingua franca’, from which the term is derived, was a form of the Provençal language that was used as a lingua franca by the multilingual crusaders.

16. Deciding on a National and/or an Official language for Multilingual Nations • When governments are presented with the problem of selecting a national or an official language or languages, as many ‘new’ nations have been, lingua francas are very useful. • There are clear advantages to be gained from the selection of a language which many people already understand. • In some cases, though, complications may arise because competing or alternative lingua francas are available.

17. In India.. • There are over 300 native languages. • Hindi, for example, is used as a lingua franca in much of the northern part of the country. • Hindi has an advantage, being an indigenous language, but it also has a disadvantage of benefiting its native speakers while other indigenous groups still have to learn it as a second language. • English, on the other hand, operates as a lingua franca throughout the country, though tends to be used only by relatively educated speakers. • As a solution, English has been selected to be the official language of the nation while Hindi and other native languages are regarded as national languages of India.

18. In Malaysia.. • A federation was formed in 1963 with a population of only ten million, but with a linguistic situation that was very complex. • Malay is the native language of perhaps 30 per cent of the population. • Another 30 per cent speak one of twelve different Chinese languages. • Roughly 10 per cent speak various Indian languages. • The rest speak varieties of Portuguese, Thai and several ‘aboriginal’ languages. • English is a lingua franca for many of the educated. • The sociolinguistic problem is further complicated by the languages which are used as the medium of instruction in schools: Malay, Tamil, Mandarin, Arabic and English are all used as languages of instruction in Malaysia. • There is therefore clearly a problem in Malaysia as to which language should be selected to act as the national language.

19. More on the Malaysian Situation • Malay is the most widely understood lingua franca and therefore would be suitable as a national language. • But, Malays are politically dominant in the country and attempts to make Malay the sole official language might cause resentment among the Chinese and Indians. • English on the other hand cannot be claimed to be in any sense a national language, but it is the most popular educational medium, for what are largely economic reasons. • This problem has as yet not really been solved, but while group identity plays an important part in maintaining language loyalty towards languages like Tamil, these community languages appear to be gradually ceding in importance to Malay (for reasons of national loyalty) and to English (for reasons of international economics) in more official functions and circumstances. • Government policy appears to be in the direction of strengthening both Malay and English as official languages of Malaysia.

20. Further Solution to Global Multilingualism • A further solution has sometimes been advocated for solving the world communication problems. • This solution is that an artificial language such as Esperanto should be adopted as a lingua franca. • Supporters of Esperanto would like to see it used as a world-wide lingua franca in order to solve the problem of international multilingualism. • However, it is very unlikely that any nation would want to adopt Esperanto because of the practical problems involved.

21. Why Esperanto is Unfitas an International Language • Although it is easier to learn than natural languages, Esperanto may not be suitable as an International language. • Esperanto is clearly based on European-type languages, and would therefore benefit native speakers of European languages only. • There are as yet no real signs of Esperanto making very great headway as a solution to international communication problem. • For now, English seems to serve that purpose extremely well.

22. The Suggestion to make Esperanto an official Lingua franca of the EU • In the European Union, disputes can often arise as to which language is to be used officially. • Advocates of Esperanto would suggest that, if it were made the official language of the EU, disputes of this kind would not arise. • It is believed that unlike English or French, Esperanto is nobody’s native language, and therefore gives no one an unfair advantage, just as English in India is in many ways a fairer choice as a lingua franca than Hindi.

23. Language Planning: The Selection of a National Standard Language • In language planning, often the role of a national government does not stop at selecting a national language. • Once selected, the language may have to be established, developed and standardized (status panning). • The government, for example may play a part in developing a suitable orthography, or in deciding whether a particular dialect of the language should be selected. • It may also want to help with vocabulary development and to decide exactly which grammatical and phonological forms should be represented in the standard. • This type of language planning, which focuses on the linguistic characteristics of varieties undergoing planning, is known as corpus planning. • English, of course, developed a standard variety by relatively ‘natural’ means, over the centuries, out of a kind of consensus, due to various social factors. • For many newer countries, though, the development of a standard language has had to take place fairly rapidly, and government intervention has therefore been necessary.