Abstract
This sociolinguistic study was conducted in conjunction with a project on the development of a course syllabus and instructional materials for the teaching of Hiligaynon as mother tongue in Region VI Western Visayas, Philippines. A corpora of the first one thousand commonly used in Hiligaynon was developed through an adopted concordancing software. Derived from corpus linguistics, a corpora study is a descriptive method of studying language in context and is ideal for a functional-based analysis of language (Meyer, 2004). The words were culled from various genres in the local language. These were analyzed for meaning, part of speech, and level of usage in Hiligaynon discourse. The corpora, however, yielded codes borrowed from English. A semantic, syntactic, and functional analysis of the words led to the following categories: adapted words, convenient alternative words, words occurring in compound nouns, indigenized spelling, indigenized pronunciation, and clipped words. The results imply that a purist approach in teaching mother tongue will limit the learners’ acquisition of vocabulary words and skills in meaning-making. It is recommended that language teachers take an eclectic posturing that considers multi-modalities, translanguaging, authenticity, linguistic resourcing, and entextualization.
Highlights
The Philippines is a linguistically-diverse nation with several regional languages across the archipelago – Tagalog, Hiligaynon, Kapampangan, Waray, Pangasinense, Tausug, Iloko, Maguindanaoan, Bikol, Maranao, Cebuano, Chabacano, Akeanon, among others (Alcudia, Bilbao, Dequilla, Germinal, Rosano, & Violeta, 2016)
Filmore (1992) identified the types of linguistic data that can be analyzed through corpus linguistics: 1) data gained by intuition a. the researchers’ own intuition (“introspection”) b. other people’s (“informants’”) intuition
Corpora is an ideal method for a functional-based analyses of language that are focused on providing a formal description of a language and on its use as a communicative tool
Summary
The Philippines is a linguistically-diverse nation with several regional languages across the archipelago – Tagalog, Hiligaynon, Kapampangan, Waray, Pangasinense, Tausug, Iloko, Maguindanaoan, Bikol, Maranao, Cebuano, Chabacano, Akeanon, among others (Alcudia, Bilbao, Dequilla, Germinal, Rosano, & Violeta, 2016). The mother tongue in the respective regions of the country had to be used from kindergarten through Grades 1 to 3. This curricular innovation invited questions and skepticism from parents and teachers themselves. Despite massive capacity-building activities and institutional initiatives provided to teachers, anecdotal evidence suggests that teachers are not confident in the use of mother tongue. They encounter parents who rationalize that their children are sent to formal education to learn English. A team of faculty members from the College of Education initiated a research project that looked into theories of learning and cognition to highlight the impact and usefulness of a child’s mother tongue in learning other languages and in grasping concepts in learning areas in school
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