1 / 24

Language Maintenance VS Language death

Language Maintenance VS Language death. Lecture 5. Reminder of Mid term next week. Language Death & Shift. Differences between language shift and language death : Language Shift : This is a process in which one language displaces another in the linguistic repertoire of a community.

pittss
Download Presentation

Language Maintenance VS Language death

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Language Maintenance VSLanguage death Lecture 5 Reminder of Mid term next week

  2. Language Death & Shift Differences between language shift and language death: • Language Shift: This is a process in which one language displaces another in the linguistic repertoire of a community. • Language Death: This is a process that occurs when a language is no longer spoken naturally anywhere in the world.

  3. UNESCO “As the disappearance of any one language constitutes an irretrievable loss to mankind, it is for UNESCO a task of great urgency to respond to this situation by promoting and, if possible, sponsoring programs of linguistic organizations for the description in the form of grammars, dictionaries and texts, including the recording of oral literatures, of hitherto unstudied or inadequately documented endangered and dying languages.” http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/endangered-languages/

  4. Language Loss • Potentially endangered • Endangered • Seriously endangered • Moribund • Extinct (Wurm 1998)

  5. Potentially Endangered • Socially and economically disadvantaged • Under heavy pressure from a larger language • Beginning to lose child speakers

  6. EndangeredLanguages • Few or no children learning the language • The youngest good speakers are young adults.

  7. And Toward Extinction • Seriously endangered • Moribund • Extinct • The youngest good speakers age 50 or older • Only a handful of good speakers • No speaker

  8. Language Loss • Factors leading to language loss • Death of speakers • Social • Cultural • Economic • Political

  9. Death of Speakers • Natural disasters • Starvation • Diseases • Genocides

  10. Social Factors • Young men moving to urban center • Intermarriage • Aging population in the community

  11. Cultural Factors • Cultural contact affects language attitude • Culturally more aggressive dominant language • Religion • Modern metropolitan culture • Technology

  12. Economic Factors • Economic advantage associated with dominant language • Job opportunity • Material wealth

  13. Political Factors • Political influences • Conquest • Language policy: official language • Recommendations and laws • Assimilatory education

  14. Language Shift • Forced language shift • Voluntary language shift Language shift Language loss

  15. Why Should We Care? • Loss of a language is a loss of a culture “Every language reflects a unique world-view and culture complex” (Wurm 1991) • Any other reasons?

  16. Incentives to Speak Indigenous Languages • Secret language that their oppressors cannot speak • Rallying symbol of a political and/or cultural movement • Self- and Group identity • Any other incentives?

  17. Language Use Not only traditional, but also modern context Not only in the classroom, but outside the classroom Preventing Language Loss • Documentation and archivization • Intergenerational transmission • Vernacularization • Changing the society

  18. Documentation and archivization

  19. What is a digital language archive? • a forum / platform for data providers and data users to negotiate and exchange • a trusted repository created and maintained by an institution with a commitment to the long-term preservation of archived material • has policies and processes for materials acquisition, cataloguing, preservation, dissemination, migration to new digital formats • a collection of managed materials

  20. Modern South Arabian Languages • Mehri • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_South_Arabian_languages • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71D8PgC2HTA • http://www.okaz.com.sa/new/Issues/20131207/Con20131207660043.htm • Janet’s • http://www.leeds.ac.uk/arts/info/125219/modern_south_arabian_languages/ • http://www.leeds.ac.uk/arts/info/125219/modern_south_arabian_languages/2374/events • http://www.leeds.ac.uk/arts/info/125219/modern_south_arabian_languages/2372/useful_links

  21. Ethnologue Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web-based publication that contains statistics for 7,105 languages and dialects in the 17th edition, released in 2013.Up until the 16th edition in 2009, the publication was a printed volume. Ethnologue provides information on the number of speakers, location, dialects, linguistic affiliations, availability of the Bible in the language, and an estimate of language viability using EGIDS.As of July 2013, it is the most comprehensive and accessible language catalog, although some information is dated or spurious. A project with similar goals that is still in development is the Linguasphere Observatory Register • https://www.ethnologue.com/

  22. List of endangered languages in the world • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_endangered_languages • In Europe; • http://www.helsinki.fi/~tasalmin/europe_report.html

  23. National Language Planning 1. Selection 2. Codification / Standardization 3. Elaboration 4. Implementation (Securing acceptance) Holmes, Janet. 2013. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 4th edition. London: Pearson, p. 107. 4/12

More Related