Authorised voices: literacy practices of language revitalisation through education

Abstract

ABSTRACT Current research on language revitalisation through education has highlighted the impact of the standard language ideology on minoritised language practices. This ideology is intertwined with emerging literacy practices in language revitalisation, leading to debates on what to teach minority language students, and how. The paper argues that language education is as much about the language standard, as it is about the sociolinguistic voices that are raised in the language revitalisation classroom. Some heteroglossic voices become authorised as a language that is worth writing in when educators derive their authority from two sources: anonymity and authenticity [Woolard, K. A. (2016). Singular and plural: Ideologies of linguistic authority in 21st century Catalonia. Oxford University Press]. The analysis shows how anonymous and authentic voices are authorised within a literacy-based language educational programme in North-East Romanian Moldavia; the programme has evolved in the context of the regional Hungarian – often called Csángó – language revitalisation. The authorisation of voices has profound implications for the specific purpose of language education and the content of language classes, its methodology and its desired long-term consequences. By bringing together Woolard's concept of linguistic authority and sociolinguistic voice, the analysis suggests that authorising voice is crucial in understanding emerging literacy practices of language revitalisation through education.