Suchergebnisse

The protection and promotion of Inuit culture was identified as one of the most important goals for the creation of Nunavut, and language is one of the most important elements of Inuit culture. In 2008, Nunavut adopted a groundbreaking language legislative package to protect the Inuit language in the most significant way. In order to respond to the pressures confronting the Inuit language, and to ensure that its quality and prevalence are protected and promoted, the Government of Nunavut presented in 2012 Uqausivut, a comprehensive plan to coordinate a number of government language programs and services. This article provides an overview of Nunavut's new language policy framework, and how the territorial government intends to take positive action to protect, revitalize and promote the Inuit Language across the Territory. La protection et la promotion de la culture inuite ont été identifiées comme parmi les plus importants objectifs pour la création du Nunavu

AbstractThe present study analyses the attitudes of Italo-Mexican speakers in a bicultural, bilingual community, Chipilo, Mexico, who have preserved their minority language, Veneto, for over a century. The study was guided by two research questions, which examined the possible instruction in Veneto in schools and the link between speakers' identity and Veneto. Three social variables were examined: gender, age, and education. The results showed a positive correlation between participants' identity and Veneto use, specifically among younger male speakers. In terms of instruction in schools, the data revealed the possibility of incorporating Veneto in classrooms; predominantly positive responses were given among males (aged 35–55+) with College and University levels of education. Based on these two results, there is a high probability of Veneto maintenance in the near future.

2013 Spring. ; Includes bibliographical references. ; The complex nature of language has interested me as long as I can remember: how we experience it and how it affects our lives in both personal and public ways. This fascination was the spark for a thesis body of work that considers Ludwig Wittgenstein's "language game" in the context of contemporary discourse. In his publication Philosophical Investigations, he first coins the term, noting that it is "meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life." This idea that we activate language as we speak it, is the cornerstone of my personal exploration of the written and spoken word as a medium and the foundation of this thesis body.

This volume further complicates and advances the contemporary perspective on language endangerment by examining the outcomes of the most commonly cited responses to language endangerment, i.e. language documentation, language revitalization, and training. The present collection takes stock of many complex and pressing issues, such as the assessment of the degree of language endangerment, the contribution of linguistic scholarship to language revitalization programs, the creation of successful language reclamation programs, the emergence of languages that arise as a result of revitalization efforts after interrupted transmission, the ethics of fieldwork, and the training of field linguists and language educators. The volume's case studies provide detailed personal accounts of fieldworkers and language activists who are grappling with issues of language documentation and revitalization in the concrete physical and socio-cultural settings of native speaker communities in different regions of the world.

Between 1884 and 1900, Germany established protectorates in large areas of the South Pacific. The authorities assumed that the linguistically extremely diverse areas would pose communication problems. Thus the question arose whether German should become the lingua franca in the South Pacific. After a controversial discussion; the German government implemented language policies to promote the German language in the colonies. This chapter shows why, on the one hand, German language policies were doomed to failure and why, on the other, they unintentionally supported other linguistic developments such as the introduction of borrowing from German into indigenous languages, the development of German settler varieties, and the spread of pidgin languages.

AbstractFollowing the publication of William Stokoe'sSign Language Structurein 1960, there was a proliferation of linguistic research addressing different aspects of sign languages. The emergence of this research had implications not only for linguistics as an academic discipline, but also for the deaf community itself. One area in which the study of sign languages and the growing activism of deaf communities overlapped in powerful ways was in calls for the official recognition of sign languages – that is, with respect to status planning. In addition to status planning, there have also been clear examples of corpus planning, acquisition planning, and prestige planning with respect to sign languages. Although efforts to engage in language planning for sign languages, and to develop and implement language policies for such languages, share many characteristics with language planning targeting spoken languages, in other ways they are quite distinctive. In this article, an overview of language planning and policy for sign languages is provided, followed by discussions of the linguistic human rights of sign language users and the role of language policies for sign languages in efforts to ensure civil rights for deaf individuals and communities.

"Why some children being raised in multilingual environments use more of their minority language than others is an important question both for researchers and caregivers of multilingual children. This book sheds light on this question by exploring it through the lens of three siblings on the Isle of Skye, Scotland, who are being raised in an extended family where the adults are trying to maintain the endangered Scottish Gaelic language with them. However, despite the adults' best efforts, and despite the fact that the children attend a Gaelic immersion school, none of the children currently use very much Gaelic. Smith-Christmas looks at the adults' language practices with the children, as well as their language practices with each other and the language norms in the wider community, in order to explain why language maintenance is such a continual uphill struggle for this family"--

It has been widely accepted that parental language beliefs play a crucial role in language maintenance. Studies show that Chinese immigrants are not exempted from language shift although they are frequently reported cherishing their language as an important part of their culture. This paper attempts to find out how parental language beliefs reflect their daily language behaviour. Eight recent Chinese migrant families had 60 minutes of conversation recorded each month for one calendar year. Their language use has been analyzed and compared with the information gathered from a home language use questionnaire. Results show that there is a substantial gap between parental language beliefs and their actual language behaviour. Although the parents state they strongly support mother tongue maintenance, within 28 months, the use of mother tongue had dropped significantly and there is very little evidence showing much effort from the parents to prevent this from happening. This could be either because they want their children to keep their first language but do not know how to do this, or, their language beliefs are different from their behaviour. This should raise methodological issues regarding how to interpret parental language beliefs properly in the research area.

Language legislation aims to protect or promote the status and use of one or more specified languages. Official language legislation relates to the according of official status to a language or languages, while liberal language legislation pertains to the recognition of language rights and linguistic minorities. Regarding the latter category, a distinction is drawn between the right to the language and the right to a language. The former refers to the right to use one or more specified languages, particularly in an official context, whereas the right to a language refers to the universal right to use one's mother tongue, or any language, particularly in unofficial contexts. Diversity, including linguistic diversity, is an asset that should be acknowledged and preserved — also in a judicial context.

Tribal folklore and oral tradition / Mahendra Kumar Mishra -- Oral literature of the Kondhs : certain aspects / B. Ramakrishna Reddy -- The world of the Birhor : continuity, change and loss / S. Imtiaz Hasnain, Farooq Ahmad Mir and Sangita Sarkar -- Orality and civility : explorations from an Adivasi perspective / Pradip Prabhu -- What shall we do with our 'unwritten endangered' languages? / Ramakant Agnihotri / A Bhuta named Babana / B.N. Patnaik -- Manifesto of the unwritten world : the curse of dialects / Udaya Narayana Singh -- Issues and challenges in the search of effective orthography for unwritten languages of North-East India / Umarani Pappuswamy -- Challenges of scripting Raji : an endangered language / Kavita Rastogi -- Bhili Bhasha ke Anuvad men Badha aur Bandhan (in Hindi) / Vasant Nirgune -- Least written languages of Manipur / Ch. Yashawanta Singh