Yingjiang is a frontier county in southwest Yunnan, China, with distinctive ethnic and cultural diversity. Bilingual education (BE) has been a prominent feature in Yingjiang since the 1950s due to ...supportive policies and measures at various levels. BE in Yingjiang developed so well in the 1980s that a bilingual school was awarded the title of 'flower of ethnic minority education'. However, since the late 1990s, BE in Yingjiang has gone dramatically downhill. The old 'followers of bilingual education' are in danger of withering. This can be seen from the shrinkage of the scale of BE and the dramatic reduction of bilingual schools and bilingual students. At the same time, the number and quality of bilingual teachers has been called into question. This paper, based on a document review and a field study, discusses the challenges and prospects for BE in Yingjiang. It is argued here that as the ethnic minority people in Yunnan are trying to make socioeconomic progress like other places in China, it is necessary to promote BE by reviewing the current BE mechanism, social reality and to take more sensible measures to revitalize BE, as was done in the late 1980s.
This study explores early francization models for a linguistic minority currently struggling to preserve its language. The French Acadians of New Brunswick, Canada, represent 30% of the province's ...total population, yet their numbers and their linguistic vitality are decreasing. New Brunswick has two public school systems: the English language schools cater for the majority while the French language schools have been created for the minority, with the goal of this separate, homogeneous school system being to preserve the French language. However, for some children who are members of this linguistic minority, the language is no longer spoken at home, and thus, when parents in such situations opt for the French school, their children are immersed. Data were collected from nine schools in order to examine the particular Early Francization Model they operate, and how they manage their mixed intake. Four different models of early francization (sheltered class, mainstream class with pull-out, mainstream class with pull-out plus in-class support and integrated model) for this revitalization effort are described and group interviews were carried out to assess how the schools organise their francization programme. In addition, French language outcomes were measured for students enrolled in the programme in the kindergarten year (five years old). The quantitative data indicate that children who participated in the integrated model fared better in terms of French vocabulary outcomes.
iThis volume addresses tensions that are born of the renewed or continued need to standardize ‘language’ in the early 21st century acround the world. The case studies collected here go beyond the ...traditional macro/micro dichotomy by foregrounding the role of actors as they position themselves as users of standard forms of language, oral or written, across sociolinguistic scales. By considering the perspectives and actions of people who participate in or are affected by minority language politics, the contributors aim to provide a comparative and nuanced analysis of the complexity and tensions inherent in minority language standardization processes. This volume provides new insight into how social actors in a wide range of geographical settings embrace, contribute to, resist and also reject (aspects of) minority language standardization.
The other MA student was already enrolled in a Doctoral program and was studying the proto-historic on the Northern Plains - interested in tribal knowledge and preservation efforts with current ...research focused on Omaha Clan structure, status, and mortuary practices. The following was taken from her Letter of Interest: My thesis research was on the history of native language innovation, collaboration, and negotiation that has aided in the creation of the Shoshonean Language Reunions and how this history can still be learned from to inspire and guide continued language revitalization efforts.
Indigenous populations around the world face the culturally devastating prospect of language loss. In the United States, Native communities are at risk. This study examines the challenge of language ...loss for the Kumeyaay Nation, located in southwestern portion of the United States. It explores the language loss experienced by the Kumeyaay people, as well as the impact this loss has had on its people in San Diego, California, and Baja California, Mexico. This is a uniquely Indigenous study: the author is a Kumeyaay tribal member and fluent language speaker, and Kumeyaay elders provide insight for policy recommendations. Interviews with extant Kumeyaay speakers reveal their small number and the difficulties of language transmission for the individual, family, and community. Perceptions of Kumeyaay elders about language atrophy are mapped onto UNESCO factors of language loss and are placed in the context of language socialization literature. The practices of extermination, containment, and later, of assimilation are shown to have directly and indirectly threatened the Kumeyaay language. Interviews show that elders’ perceptions about the state of the language are accurate, and they support the UNESCO supposition that small numbers of speakers and a lack of intergenerational language transmission can produce language atrophy. Prospects for current revitalization of the language depend upon an inventory of Kumeyaay language assets and innovative language transmission programs tailored to Native Kumeyaay communities.
This report describes the 2014 Native American Languages Summit (NALS) in Washington, DC. Presenters included Lillian Sparks Robinson, commissioner of the Administration for Native Americans (ANA); ...Ron Lessard, chief of staff for the White House Initiative on American Indian and Alaska Native Education; keynote speaker Julie Cajune; Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) Director Charles Monty Roessel; Michael Mason, director of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage; Kevin Shendo, then-first lieutenant governor for Jemez Pueblo, and others. With the theme “Working Together for Native American Language Success,” the summit emphasized partnerships among the ANA, BIE, tribes, and schools. This report summarizes several individual presentations and the panels and reflects on key issues in Native American language revitalization in the twenty-first century.
Metalinguistic skills may develop differently in multilingual and monolingual children. This study investigated effects of immersion in Cherokee as a second language on young children's (4;5–6;1) ...skills of noticing morphological forms/patterns in English, their first language, by comparing English past tense skills on two nonword and two real‐word tasks between a Cherokee immersion group (N= 10) and an English‐medium comparison group (N= 13). Only past finiteness (irregular forms plus overregularizations) on a real‐word sentence imitation task was significantly different, with the Cherokee group performing better. The children learning Cherokee as a second language were progressing as well as their monolingual peers on English past tense marking and in one area had developed increased attention to productive morphological patterns.
This article examines the dynamics of language relations by investigating the historical, political and ideological processes at play in the minoritization and revitalization of Kven, Meänkieli and ...Sámi languages in the North Calotte region. We focus particularly on language political and legal instruments developed and used to alter and regulate language relations in this area, and aim at providing a state-of-the-art overview of this quickly changing landscape.
When looking at the minoritized languages in this region, we can see that developments in their status are linked to the creation of modernist nation states and their borders. More recent processes are related to new global cooperation and international policy efforts, resulting in the present synchronic variation. When reflecting on the considerable changes in both international and national language policies all the way from the beginning of the post-WWII period to the strengthening of pluralism in the 1970s to today, we can see that at least some of the minority languages of the North find themselves in a considerably better societal situation than ever before. At the same time, however, multilingual practices in the form of modern communication technologies, world-wide youth culture, international migration and tourism, intertwined with language revitalization efforts, make the terrain even more complex and varied.
Why and how have languages died out? We have devised a mathematical model to help us understand how languages go extinct. We use the model to ask whether language extinction can be prevented in the ...future and why it may have occurred in the past. A growing number of mathematical models of language dynamics have been developed to study the conditions for language coexistence and death, yet their phenomenological approach compromises their ability to influence language revitalization policy. In contrast, here we model the mechanisms underlying language competition and look at how these mechanisms are influenced by specific language revitalization interventions, namely, private interventions to raise the status of the language and thus promote language learning at home, public interventions to increase the use of the minority language, and explicit teaching of the minority language in schools. Our model reveals that it is possible to preserve a minority language but that continued long-term interventions will likely be necessary. We identify the parameters that determine which interventions work best under certain linguistic and societal circumstances. In this way the efficacy of interventions of various types can be identified and predicted. Although there are qualitative arguments for these parameter values (e.g., the responsiveness of children to learning a language as a function of the proportion of conversations heard in that language, the relative importance of conversations heard in the family and elsewhere, and the amplification of spoken to heard conversations of the high-status language because of the media), extensive quantitative data are lacking in this field. We propose a way to measure these parameters, allowing our model, as well as others models in the field, to be validated.
