International collaboration and the management of linguistic resources at a diaspora festival in Okinawa

Abstract

This article uses Jernudd and Neustupný's (1987) theory of language management to address the planning, management and distribution of linguistic resources at the 4th Worldwide Uchinaanchu Festival (WUF), a diaspora festival held in Okinawa, Japan. WUF organizers – from Okinawa and diaspora communities abroad – were concerned with both international collaboration in language planning and language planning for future international collaboration. Without the former, festival planners would not have been able to provide adequate multilingual resources and services to all WUF participants. Planners' language management efforts not only enabled participants to connect with the homeland, but also helped foster an awareness of the collaborative role they might play in the planning and implementation of future events in the Okinawan diaspora. The article draws on several sources of multilingual data and reveals that micro-language planning for diaspora events is a challenging, yet rewarding, undertaking. Because of their common heritage, planners and participants alike are all major stakeholders in the outcome of language management actions taken at diaspora festivals.