Minority Language Communities Research Articles

Odds of Anxiety and Depression Symptoms in School-Aged Children From Official Language Minority Communities.

Objectives: The aim of this paper is to assess the odds of suffering from anxiety or depression symptoms based on the presence of certain determinants of health for youth living in the province of New Brunswick, Canada, and in two linguistically different Official Language Minority Communities (OLMCs) in the same province.Methods: With a sample of 22,329 students from grades 7 to 12 in the province of New Brunswick, Canada, logistic regressions were performed to assess each determinant of health's effect on symptoms of anxiety and depression.Results: Some social determinants, like family support, social support and food insecurity, were identified as important determinants of mental health status regardless of linguistic group membership or community membership, while other determinants, such as alcohol use, cannabis use and natural environment, were more prominent in one OLMC than the other.Discussion: Social psychology and public health theories are used in an attempt to explain the results. Limitations and recommendations are also brought forward.

Background and language of the Narum community in Marudi, Sarawak

The Narum community is located in Marudi, Sarawak and belongs to a minority language community that is heading towards language extinction. In terms of language cognate, there are similarities between the language of the Narum community and the Kenyah community. However, the number of speakers of this language is declining and the number who can master the Narum language well, especially the younger generation is very limited. This puts the language of this minority community in a threatened position. This is a preliminary study aimed to introduce this language community. Data collection was gathered to document the linguistic and cultural situation practised in this language community. In this study, qualitative methods were applied. The data was collected by interviews to obtain data directly from this language community. The findings of this study describe the linguistic and cultural situation of the Narum language community. The attitude of the native speakers who do not pay much attention to their heritage has become one of the causes of the language of this community is increasingly threatened, in fact, this community is also increasingly unknown for their existence. In addition, intermarriage also contributes to the loss of the language of the Narum community and will also destroy the identity of this community. Indeed, it would be a huge loss if this minority community became extinct. Therefore, immediate action needs to be taken to save and preserve it. It not only needs to be immediately recorded and documented, but more importantly, these language communities need to use and know their history and language actively in order to preserve and revitalize their language and cultural heritage for future generations. Keywords: Ethnic group, language community, language extinction, minority group, Narum language, Swadesh list

Voicing patterns in stops among heritage speakers of Western Armenian in Lebanon and the US

AbstractResearch on Western Armenian (WA) has described it as having a contrast between voiceless aspirated stops and voiced stops (Fairbanks 1948; Vaux 1998; Baronian 2017). Since there is no monolingual community of WA, all speakers are part of a minority language community, and also speak the majority language. The current study examines speakers from two heritage communities of WA: one in Lebanon, where the majority language is Arabic, and one in the US, where the majority language is English. The speakers in Lebanon were found to have a contrast between voiced and voiceless unaspirated stops, in line with Lebanese Arabic. The speakers in the US were more variable, some having the English pattern of voiceless unaspirated and voiceless aspirated stops, while others had voiceless aspirated stops, but their voiced stops were variable between voiced and voiceless unaspirated. These results indicate L2 transfer in both communities, leading to two different patterns of voicing in WA.

Economy and Funding in Celtic Monority Language Communities of the United Kingdom: The Public Media Model as Paradigm

This article investigates the monolingual media in three Celtic minority language communities of the United Kingdom and Ireland, at the end of the economic crisis that began in 2008, from the perspective of the public interest media model, prevalent in the media systems of European minority language media. The main areas of study are the economic volume, the funding system and the qualitative evaluation of editors and media directors regarding the effect of the economic crisis and the importance of public aid. The three minority Celtic languages analyzed are Welsh, Irish and Scottish Gaelic. The methodological design is based on the techniques of systematic quantitative comparison between communities and a qualitative approach.

Quebec’s English-Speaking Community and the Partnership Approach of Its Networks in Health

This article discusses the networking and partnership approach of improving access to public health and social services, with an interest in informing best practices for official language populations in a minority context. The case of Canada’s official language minority residing in the province of Quebec and its Community Health and Social Services Network (CHSSN) is explored. Elements that support or inhibit partnership functioning, including innovative community-based participatory evaluation (CBPE) techniques, are explored. The contribution of the approach in improving the situation of Quebec’s minority language communities with respect to their health care access is highlighted.

Public Policy and Citizen-Based Practices That Support Social and Health Services for Official and Co-Official Language Minority Communities. An International Perspective: What Has Really Been Achieved and Where Are the Gaps?

Public Policy and Citizen-Based Practices That Support Social and Health Services for Official and Co-Official Language Minority Communities. An International Perspective: What Has Really Been Achieved and Where Are the Gaps? / Politiques publiques et pratiques citoyennes soutenant les services sociaux et de santé pour les communautés minoritaires de langues officielles et coofficielles. Une perspective internationale : ce qui a été accompli et ce qui reste à faire. Un article de la revue Minorités linguistiques et société / Linguistic Minorities and Society (Public Policy and Citizen-Based Practices That Support Social and Health Services for Official and Co-Official Language Minority Communities. An International Perspective: What Has Really Been Achieved and Where Are the Gaps?) diffusée par la plateforme Érudit.

Bilingualism in Canada: the legislation's reform

The Official Language Act plays a key role in the lives of Canadians. Its purpose is to ensure respect for English and French as the official languages of Canada in governmental and parliamentary institutions, support the development and vitality of official language minority communities, set out powers, duties and functions of federal institutions with respect to the official languages of Canada. The Government of Canada has decided to modernize the Act to ensure that it continues to serve Canadians in a changing environment. That is why the Government of Canada showed its commitment to promote, protect and update a law by sharing its vision for official languages reform in February, titled French and English: Towards a substantive equality of official languages in Canada. After 30 years since the last major update, a modernization of the Official Languages Act is necessary to allow the law to keep pace with the social, demographic and technological realities in today’s society, which did not exist during the last revision in 1988. The bill recognizes the diversity of provincial and territorial language regimes and focuses on learning opportunities of the first language in minority settings and on learning opportunities of a second official language in a majority situation to improve the rate of bilingualism among Canadians. The bill also seeks to protect institutions of official language minority communities both for the English-speaking minority in Quebec and for the French-speaking minority in the rest of the country, and proposes new ways to better protect French in Canada, including in Québec.

Language indexicalities in multilingual English language classrooms: A narrative inquiry

Language indexicality is the major problem in multilingual classrooms. Students from minority language communities may feel dominated in the classroom due to the lack of competency in the dominant languages used in the classroom. I have been dealing with such diversified classes for a long time and my teaching experience motivated me to carry out this research. This study tried to explore the nature of language dominance in a multilingual English language classroom and how students of minority community feel in the classroom. I used narrative inquiry as the main research design and purposive sampling procedure for sampling the participants and research site. Language dominance in the multilingual classroom was found problematic for minority community students. They mainly feel dominated in the classroom and do not enjoy studying in the classroom. The study also found that minority language learners are demotivated to take part in classroom interaction. Inappropriate use of dominating language by the teachers also found more problematic in the study. The study concluded that use of dominant language heavily in the multilingual classroom creates problem rather than helping those students who have different mother tongues.

Economy and funding of European minority language media: Reality and impact of digitalization and economic crisis

This article investigates the economy of monolingual media systems in nine European minority language communities during 2009–2015, a period of strong economic crisis and accelerated digitalization. The main areas of study are three: The economic volume or weight of those media systems and its variation between 2009 and 2015; the current funding structure of the four media types (press, radio, TV and cybermedia); and the qualitative evaluation of media editors and managers on the effect of those two crises as well as the significance of the public aid. The nine European minority languages are Basque, Welsh, Galician, Irish, Breton, Frisian, Sámi, Corsican and Scottish-Gaelic. As for the findings, it can be highlighted that the economic volume or revenue of European minority language media is close to five hundred million euros per year, of which over ninety per cent is public funding, mostly devoted to broadcasting media. The conclusion set forth is that public funding should not be framed as aid but as a social, cultural and economic investment.

Pemertahanan Bahasa Dayak Kenyah di Kota Samarinda

The focus of the problem in this study is motivated by the phenomenon of the development of the times and the rapid flow of globalization making the Dayak ethnic in Samarinda City specifically, becoming an ethnic minority so language retention needs to be made in multilingual minority language communities. The language that is the focus of research is Dayak Kenyah Language. The purpose of this study was to determine the factors of preservation of Dayak Kenyah Language in Samarinda City. This research uses descriptive qualitative method with a sociolinguistic approach. The research data were written text (conversational transcripts) from the data source of the Dayak Kenyah ethnic community in Samarinda City. Data collection techniques using the stages of observation, Simak Free Engage Involved (SBLC) techniques, and interviews. Research instruments in the form of devices, stationery, notebooks, and indicators of language maintenance. The results of the study found that there were efforts made by the Dayak Kenyah community in Samarinda City as a manifestation of the language of the Dayak Kenyah region. The research findings are: (1) family factors, (2) social factors, (3) communication intensity factors, (4) activity factors, and (5) desire factors in language retention. The conclusion in this study focuses more on the care and contribution of various layers of ethnic Dayak Kenyah communities, especially in Samarinda, towards the regional languages ​​they have.

Primary-level English-medium instruction in a minority language community: any space for the local language?

ABSTRACT One of the features of the growing prominence of English across the globe is the proliferation of English-medium instruction (EMI) programmes at all levels of education, driven by a neoliberal agenda which places a disproportionate value on English over other languages. While this spread has primarily affected more developed, urban contexts, EMI has also started to spread beyond the borders of large cities and into peripheral, rural areas, including those where minority languages are used. There is at present, however, a sparsity of research on how the introduction of EMI impacts the often delicate language ecology in such contexts. This paper presents the results of a study of how EMI policy was implemented at a primary school in the Deep South of Thailand, a region where the majority of the population speak Malay as their L1. The findings of this research, drawn on the basis of interviews, focus groups and classroom observations, highlighted the existence of a hierarchical linguistic ecology in which English and Thai, the international and national language, were privileged over the local language, owing both to their dominant position in official language policy and the attitudes of local policy arbiters.

“Venerable Relics of Ancient Lore”

Abstract As England’s first colony, home to a rich literary tradition and a still-thriving minority language community, Wales stands as a valuable example of how premodern traditions can and should inflect modern studies of postcolonial and world literatures. This study maps how medieval, postcolonial, and world literary studies have intersected thus far and presents a reading of the medieval Welsh Mabinogion as postcolonial world literature. Specifically, I read the postcolonial refrain as a deeply-entrenched characteristic of traditional Welsh literature, manifesting in the Mabinogion tale of the brothers Lludd and Llefelys and a related poetic triad, the “Teir Gormes” (Three Oppressions). Through analysis of the context and reception of Lady Charlotte Guest’s English translation of Welsh materials, I then theorize traditional Welsh material as postcolonial, colonizing, and worlding literature.

Implicit Standardization in a Minority Language Community: Real-Time Syntactic Change among Hasidic Yiddish Writers.

The recent turn to “big data” from social media corpora has enabled sociolinguists to investigate patterns of language variation and change at unprecedented scales. However, research in this paradigm has been slow to address variable phenomena in minority languages, where data scarcity and the absence of computational tools (e.g., taggers, parsers) often present significant barriers to entry. This article analyzes socio-syntactic variation in one minority language variety, Hasidic Yiddish, focusing on a variable for which tokens can be identified in raw text using purely morphological criteria. In non-finite particle verbs, the overt tense marker tsu (cf. English to, German zu) is variably realized either between the preverbal particle and verb (e.g., oyf-tsu-es-n up-to-eat-INF ‘to eat up’; the conservative variant) or before both elements (tsu oyf-es-n to up-eat-INF; the innovative variant). Nearly 38,000 tokens of non-finite particle verbs were extracted from the popular Hasidic Yiddish discussion forum Kave Shtiebel (the ‘coffee room’; kaveshtiebel.com). A mixed-effects regression analysis reveals that despite a forum-wide favoring effect for the innovative variant, users favor the conservative variant the longer their accounts remain open and active. This process of rapid implicit standardization is supported by ethnographic evidence highlighting the spread of language norms among Hasidic writers on the internet, most of whom did not have the opportunity to express themselves in written Yiddish prior to the advent of social media.

Kittens, Blankets and Seaweed: Developing Empathy in Relation to Language Learning via Children’s Picturebooks

Children’s literature has an important role to play in developing knowledge of the world, and learning to understand the feelings of others. A growing body of literature explores the role of dual language picturebooks (parallel, interlingual and simultaneous) in drawing on the linguistic capital of multilingual children in classrooms. There is also research examining how dual language picturebooks privilege languages and the impact of this on the ethnolinguistic vitality of minority language communities; however, to date there is little if any literature exploring how dual language picturebooks can support novice readers to develop an understanding of language status and language learning. In this study, five children’s picturebooks are analysed using close analysis of text and illustration to explore what understandings of language learning and multilingualism novice readers might gain from these picturebooks. Findings indicate that these books support understanding of the different status of the languages being learned or spoken as reflected in the stories. They also raise questions concerning who these picturebooks are written for; the extent to which different visual and textual cues are used to support the development of empathy; and the pedagogy of working with visual and textual cues for developing empathy through picturebooks.

Community versus Commodity in Francophone Canada: A Multilevel Approach to the Neoliberalization of Immigration

AbstractSince the 1990s, Canada's francophone minority communities (FMCs) have become increasingly involved in francophone immigration governance, and this trend has coincided with the wider neoliberalization of immigration in Canada. This article analyzes the implications of the growing influence of a neoliberal immigration policy and the narrative of an ideal immigrant on Canada's FMCs by focussing on the francophone Acadian community in New Brunswick, Canada's only constitutionally bilingual province. Making use of three types of sources—semistructured interviews, debates in the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick, and official and archival documents—the article argues that francophone and Acadian organizations have adopted the federal, neoliberal perspective on immigration, placing greater emphasis on economic integration and the creation of a bilingual workforce. Changes in the type of immigrant selected and role of the community in the lives of francophone immigrants create new challenges for minority language communities that define and identify themselves through language use and belonging.

Whose language is it anyway? Challenges to Tamil language revitalisation efforts in Myanmar

ABSTRACT This article explores the Tamil language revitalisation efforts undertaken by the Myanmar-Tamils living in Yangon post-2010. The data consists of informal and semi-structured interviews as well as participant observation. Following a historical overview, this article highlights some of the strategies that members of the Myanmar-Tamil community have employed to revitalise Tamil. This article argues that the long-term sustainability of these efforts remains uncertain. Firstly, the historical discrimination faced by the Myanmar-Tamils has left behind a legacy of fear. Secondly, due to a lack of what Fishman terms ‘ideological clarifications’ within the community, agents for language revitalisation have little understanding of the competing beliefs that members of the community hold about the language, making it challenging for language revitalisation to occur. This article highlights that in persecuted minority-language communities, the success of language revitalisation efforts hinges not only on external support but also on the community’s ability to garner internal support.

Assessing 40 Years of Group Vitality Research and Future Directions

This article provides key group vitality concepts followed by a selective overview of four decades of research on vitality issues. Group vitality is what makes language communities behave as distinctive and active collective entities within multilingual settings. Three structural factors combine to foster strong to weak group vitality: demographic factors, institutional support, and status. The objective vitality framework uses available census and sociolinguistic indicators to measure the relative vitality of minority and majority language communities in contact. Two case studies show the crucial role of language policies in improving or undermining the vitality of language minorities in Canada. Studies of subjective perceptions of group vitality are reviewed as they relate to language and communicative outcomes. Key vitality models are noted along with future research directions highlighting the need for a theoretical integration of the vitality framework.

Ideology and representation of Vlach Romanian online. Between linguistic activism and unengaged language use

This paper offers a brief review of the main online outlets for the variety of Romanian spoken in Eastern Serbia (Vlach Romanian), exploring the possible functions the internet plays for minority language communities in general and focusing on its role in the formation of active communities of collaborative minority language producers. We will first briefly introduce the Vlach community and their language, Vlach Romanian, and examine how it is used online by the main actors involved in the debate regarding the origin and status of their language (which we call the independentists and the reintegrationists), but also by non-engaged members of the Vlach community, who promote the active use online of this mostly oral variety. The main online initiatives we present are Paun Durlić’s website, the website of Matka Vlahilor association and the Vlasi na kvadrat Facebook page. We contend that the internet activity, both of the language activists and of the unengaged members of the community, mirrors their offline, real-world ideologies, but, at the same time, challenges the ideologies of contempt generally surrounding minority languages.

Variation in the tonal space of Yangliu Lalo, an endangered language of Yunnan, China

AbstractEndangered tone languages are not often studied within quantitative variationist approaches, but such approaches can provide valuable insights for language description and documentation in the Tibeto-Burman area. This study examines tone variation within Yangliu Lalo (Central Ngwi), a minority language community in China that is currently shifting to Southwestern Mandarin. Yangliu Lalo’s Tone 4, the rising-falling High tone, is lowering and flattening among young people, especially females, who also tend to use Lalo less frequently. Tonal range in elicited speech is shown to be decreasing as use of Lalo decreases. Concurrently, the standard deviation of the pitch of individual tones also decreases, while at the same time speakers with a narrow tonal range also show greater articulatory precision for each tone. Tonal range and standard deviation of pitch are both parameters of tonal space, the arrangement of, and relationship between, tones within the tonal system. The results from our apparent-time study suggest that tonal space provides a new avenue of sociolinguistic inquiry for tone languages.

When ‘home languages’ become ‘holiday languages’: teachers’ discourses about responsibility for maintaining languages beyond English

ABSTRACT Despite research evidence showing that home language maintenance is important both individually and societally, the task of managing and encouraging it has traditionally fallen to minority language communities and families, tending to lead to inter-generational language shift. Teachers’ discourses about responsibilities for language maintenance, attrition and shift have not been researched adequately. This paper addresses this gap by offering a critical discourse analysis of research interviews with British primary school educators. Research on this topic is important because it is well known that teachers’ attitudes impact on local policies and classroom practices. Findings show that teachers construct parents and children as responsible for maintenance and attrition of languages beyond English. Teachers hold varying attitudes on language maintenance, some perceiving it as important, whilst others do not. However, few participants claim any significant sense of personal or institutional responsibility for home language maintenance. Parents are construed as denying their children the chance to develop their home languages and children are negatively appraised for not taking opportunities to use them. Globally, teachers need to be empowered to challenge societal ideologies embedded in language policies and the education system should take a role in home language development to help prevent language shift.