Use Of Minority Languages Research Articles

The Role of Community Radio in Promotion of Indigenous Minority Languages and Cultures in Malawi

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the role of community radio broadcasting in promoting indigenous minority languages and cultures in selected parts of Malawi. The study collected empirical data from two community radio stations and their surrounding populations. Using the theories of ethnolinguistic vitality and globalization, the study reveals that recent establishment of community radio stations, centered on local community development, has created opportunity for promotion of languages and cultures, as practiced by minorities in local areas surrounding the radio stations. Thus, the use of minority languages simplifies the understanding of information and encourages the participation of speakers who might otherwise be excluded due to language difficulties.

Ethnic Classroom Composition and Minority Language Use among Classmates: Do Peers Matter for Students’ Language Achievement?

AbstractThis article examines the relationship between ethnic classroom composition and students’ language-related achievement. We investigate whether minority language use among classmates accounts for effects of ethnic composition on minority students’ German reading comprehension and their proficiency in the minority languages Russian and Turkish. We employ multilevel models using cross-sectional data from a sample of ninth-grade students participating in the German National Educational Panel Study. Our findings indicate that students’ minority language background rather than their ethnic origin accounts for ethnic composition effects. We find a negative relationship between the ethno-lingual classroom composition and students’ German reading comprehension, but the association is small and limited to minority students. Moreover, the ethno-lingual classroom composition is positively correlated with minority language proficiency, specifically among Turkish-speaking students. These associations are substantially reduced after controlling for students’ minority language use with their classmates, indicating that a higher proportion of minority language students in a classroom provides additional opportunities for acquiring or maintaining higher levels of proficiency in the minority language. Overall, the ethnic classroom composition does not appear to substantially reinforce existing inequalities between minority and majority students.

Linguistic Rights and Education in the Republics of the Russian Federation: Towards Unity through Uniformity

This article traces the evolution of the debate on the balancing of federal and regional competences in regulating the use of minority languages in Russia’s education system. Taking into account relevant law and judicial practice, as well as developments in center-periphery relations since 2017, the article argues that the federal center has been increasingly depriving Russia’s republics of the ability to self-regulate in the education sphere – particularly over the question as to whether they may require the compulsory study of republican languages (recognized as co-official with Russian) in schools located within their administrative borders. These processes can be located in the context of the centralization of the education system and a corresponding reduction of multilingualism in Russia’s schools. This can, in turn, be seen as part of an underlying drive to promote national unity through uniformity, through the dilution of the country’s linguistic and cultural diversity and a concurrent emphasis on the primacy of the Russian language. The article further argues that the Russian education system’s centralization has been ongoing: while it has intensified since 2017, the trajectory of the jurisprudence shows an earlier movement towards a concern for ‘unity’ that anticipated it.

Informal bilingual teachers’ language practices and the consequences on pupils’ language choices in a situation of unequal bilingualism: The case of an Upper Sorbian education system

Abstract This paper investigates how bilingual Upper Sorbian-German teachers who belong to the Sorbian speech community (Lusatia, Germany) introduce the minority language during German language lessons in an Upper Sorbian school. In Lusatia, as well as in Sorbian schools, bilingualism is not of equal character; minority language speakers are all bilingual while the German language speakers are not encouraged to speak Sorbian. The language policy of Upper Lusatia gives Sorbs the right to use their language in public life in principle but due to the strained Sorbian-German relations, language ideologies, and hostile attitudes towards the use of minority language in the presence of Germans Sorbs do not benefit from it in practice. The school language policy divides Sorbian-speakers from pupils of German-speaking families and keeps the teaching of Sorbian separate for both groups. Only during the last two years of school are all language groups mixed. Based on participant observation of and in-depth interviews with bilingual teachers during lessons with students of the 11th grade in one Upper Sorbian school this article discusses how teachers negotiate top-down language policy in their classrooms and, introduce bilingualism; and how their language choices affect students’ language practices.

Verdant Vernaculars: Corsican Environmental Assemblages

Environmental efforts on Corsica abound and often make use of the local language. In this article, I survey the semiotics of different ‘green’ artefacts and the use of Corsican therein. Based on ethnographic data including pedagogical tools (textbooks) and practices (field trips), artefacts from ecotourism (pamphlets) and everyday items (grocery bags), and photographs of the linguistic landscape, I illustrate the workings of minority language use in everyday environmental activism. Posthumanist orientations to language and communication underlie the analysis of green Corsican assemblages, products of and catalysts for the coming‐together of disparate resources that construct a unique stewardship.

Language practices and attitudes among young minority language speakers in Thailand

ABSTRACT Language practices and attitudes among young minority language speakers in Thailand, focusing on the Kui language, are examined. Sociolinguistic data obtained from three months of fieldwork in the northeastern provinces of Surin, Sisaket and Ubon Ratchathani and in Bangkok provide insights into the language competence, language attitudes and linguistic awareness of young Kui speakers. We found that young speakers use language differently in various settings. Males and females use minority and majority languages differently and with varying confidence. Internal and external motivations such as language prestige and identity condition may foretell the future of the Kui language in Thailand. The dynamics of minority language use and the preservation and transmission of threatened and shifting languages are highlighted. This study reveals the current speaking preferences of young Kui speakers and allows for predictions regarding their prospective short- and long-term language use.

Virtual communities as breathing spaces for minority languages: Re-framing minority language use in social media

Virtual communities as breathing spaces for minority languages: Re-framing minority language use in social mediaConsidering that social media is increasingly present in our daily communicative exchanges, digital presence is an essential component of language revitalization and maintenance. Online communication has modified our language use in various ways. In fact, language use online is often described as hybrid, and boundaries across languages tend to blur. These are also characteristics of translanguaging approaches, which see language as fluid codes of communication. “Breathing spaces” are needed in order to achieve “sustainable translanguaging” practices for minority languages. The establishment of communities of performing minority language speakers in a digital environment raises the question whether these emerging virtual communities can take up the role of breathing spaces for minority languages. Społeczności wirtualne jako przestrzeń życiowa dla języków mniejszościowych. Nowe spojrzenie na używanie języków mniejszościowych w mediach społecznościowychPonieważ media społecznościowe są coraz bardziej obecne w codziennej komunikacji, obecność języków mniejszościowych w świecie cyfrowym jest niezbędnym elementem dla ich zachowania i rewitalizacji. Komunikacja online przyniosła zmiany wielu aspektów użycia języka. Używanie języka w Internecie często określa się jako hybrydowe, a granice między językami często się zacierają. Te zjawiska cechuje również transjęzyczność (translanguaging), podejście które postrzega język jako płynne kody komunikacji. W przypadku języków mniejszościowych, osiągnięcie „zrównoważonej transjęzyczności” (sustainable translanguaging) wymaga „przestrzeni życiowej” do ich używania. Tworzenie wirtualnych społeczności posługujących się językami mniejszościowymi w świecie cyfrowym rodzi pytanie, czy mogąone pełnić rolę takiej przestrzeni.

The issue of legal regulation of languages in Ukraine

The article raises the issue of implementing constitutional norms on ensuring the rights of national minorities by Ukraine. It is established that certain provisions of the Law of Ukraine “On Education” dated 05 September 2017 have been criticized both at national and international level as regards termination of curricular programs in languages of national minorities other than EU languages. It is determined that a change in language policy resulted in a conflict of interest in Chernivtsi on 17 October 2017 between representatives of Romanian national minority and representatives of NGOs "Right Sector" and "Freedom" as to the right to study in their native language. It is established that Ukraine, in violation of the international obligations defined by international treaties in the field of protecting the rights of national minorities, including those ratified by Ukraine, did not take into account the relevant recommendations of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the Venice Commission, the Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, United Nations Monitoring Mission, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, UN Special Rapporteur on Minorities.According to the results of the analysis, it is established that there is no special law determining the spheres of public life and measures to guarantee the rights of national minorities. The respective guarantees for teaching in the mother tongue were not established in the law on the status of the state language dated 25 April 2019.It is concluded that to resolve this problem, it is necessary to adopt a constitutional law that would determine the procedure for the use of national minority languages. In connection with this, the object of research is Draft Law of Ukraine "On Languages in Ukraine" No. 1103 submitted for consideration to the Verkhovna Rada on 29 August 2019 by V.V. Novynskiy, M.S. Mahomedov and others. Formal-legal, comparative-legal and logical methods are applied.The content of Part 5 of Article 53 of the Constitution of Ukraine is analyzed, it was concluded that it did not set an alternative, but it sets a mandatory obligation to perform all actions of the state to guarantee the rights of national minorities.It is concluded that it is necessary to adopt a special law on languages in Ukraine in order to implement the Constitution of Ukraine. It is recommended that the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine include Draft law No. 1103 on the agenda, consider it, and adopt it as a basis in the first reading. It is recommended to adopt laws related to the draft law on national and cultural autonomy, on indigenous peoples of Ukraine, on national minorities (new version), on local referenda, on an all-Ukrainian referendum.

IMPLEMENTING POLICIES ON COMMUNICATIONS IN ETHNIC MINORITY LANGUAGES IN VIETNAM

With a view to a sustainable development of not only ethnic minorities (EMs) but also the nation, the Party and State leaders of Vietnam have enacted numerous policies related to the use of ethnic minority languages. This article explores the implementation of those policies in Vietnam and proposes several solutions to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of communications in ethnic minority languages in Vietnam in the current period.

Responding responsibly

When responding to questions, speakers usually do not only report what they know about the question being asked. This study explores a series of survey responses on how respondents explicitly and implicitly manage responsibility for what they say. It builds on a telephone survey on workplace multilingualism in Northern Norway and focuses on one particular interview question that addresses practical as well as ideological concerns: the use of traditional minority languages at work. As representatives of regional companies, the informants face and handle responsibilities relating to their professional and organisational roles, the interactional relations of the structured interview, and the sociolinguistic and sociocultural surroundings. The choices they make when handling responsibility for their responses go beyond the realm of each of these taken separately. The study therefore highlights the importance of a perspective across different scopes and contexts. Asking what choices respondents make to respond in a responsible way involves not only the content of the question, but also implicit ideological concerns and interactional relations, as well as a range of professional and other social roles.

Detached implementation: Discourse and practice in minority language use in Romania

The paper focuses on minority language policy implementation in Romania. Although the policy framework of minority language use is considered quite satisfying by many authors, a deeper analysis reveals significant problems in the implementation of these policies. Based on implementation research, the paper reveals the hidden mechanism of language policy in Romania. First, it presents evidence that without clear guidelines and tools for accountability, state authorities leave room for negotiation, and municipalities can choose whether they want to implement minority language use provisions or not. Second, rather counterintuitively, in many cases Hungarian settlements do not implement it either. All explanations point toward the fact that Hungarian political elites fail to create public pressure to force implementation, thus they choose to keep claims regarding minority language use in the symbolic and political realm. Moreover, it argues that policy implementation is not always a necessary condition for successful claim making, as the two domains are not always linked by the public. Also, it underlines the importance of micro-level analysis in the case of minority language policies, which can be achieved by putting more focus on implementation research, instead of legal and policy-based macro-analysis.

Parental Views of Minority Language Instruction in a Spanish Enrichment Program and for English Language Learners

Forty parents of children enrolled in a Spanish Enrichment Program (SEP) at a Southern California university’s children’s center responded to a questionnaire inquiring on their attitudes toward their children learning Spanish, as well as the principles of bilingualism and the instructional use of minority languages with English Language Learners (ELLs). While parents appeared to support the SEP and the tenets of bilingualism, and value their children’s development of bilingual skills, their support for the instructional use of minority languages with ELLs to help these students develop bilingual skills was not as strong. However, notably, a large number of participants were “not sure”. This finding hints at the need for a concerted effort on the part of the SEP’s faculty and staff to provide parents with more information on the principles of second language acquisition and bilingualism in general, in order to benefit all children, not just their own

Are traditional minority languages a bench marking for the rights of migrant languages in the European Union?

In this paper a normative position will be defended. We will argue that minimal territorial minority language rights formulated in terms of the personality principle referring to traditional minority languages granted in the framework of the European Union (EU) are a benchmark for non-territorial linguistic rights. Although territorial minority languages should be granted collective rights this is in large parts of Europe not the case. Especially in the Central and Eastern European Member States language rights granted to territorial languages are assigned on the basis of personal language rights. Our argumentation will be elaborated on the basis of a comparative approach discussing the status of a traditional territorial language in Romania, more in particular Hungarian spoken in the Szeklerland area with the one of migrant languages in the Netherlands, more in particular Turkish. In accordance with the language hierarchy implying that territorial languages have a higher status than non-territorial languages both in the EUs and Member States’ language regimes nonterritorial linguistic rights will be realized as personal rights in the first place. Hence, the use of non-territorial minority languages is conditioned much as the use of territorial minority languages in the national Member States. So, the best possible scenario for mobile minority languages is to be recognized as a personal right and receive full support from the states where they are spoken. It is true that learning the host language would make inclusion of migrant language speakers into the host society smoother and securing a better position on the labour market. This should however be done without striving for full assimilation of the speakers of migrant languages for this would violate the linguistic rights of migrants to speak and cultivate one’s own heritage language, violate the EUs linguistic diversity policy, and is against the advantages provided by linguistic capital in the sense of BOURDIEU (1991).

De iure potvrđenost multikulturalnog karaktera AP Vojvodine - kritički prikaz (ne)postojećih normativnih nadležnosti autonomne pokrajine u oblasti manjinskih prava

The Constitution of the Republic of Serbia from 2006 grants the autonomous province to determine additional rights of members of national minorities by provincial regulations, under the law and in accordance with the Constitution. The main topic of this paper is how this competence has been realized in practice; or in other words, whether the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina has succeeded in preserving its national, cultural and historical specialties through an active norm-making, even with lack of legislative power, and whether the national legislator has been a partner and provided an adequate framework for this activity. Because the Constitutional Court was dealing with these issues from different perspectives, particular attention is devoted to its rulings and contradictory interpretations, concerning the legal borders of the role/autonomy of the province in saving, promoting and developing its de facto multicultural character. The goal of the paper is to provide a descriptive overview, together with a critical analysis of competences of the AP of Vojvodina in the field of minority education, culture, media and official use of minority languages, with special focus on normative opportunity of the autonomous province in accordance with the valid legal framework and Constitutional Court practice.

Between the Word of the Law and Practice: a Case of the Hungarian Speakers in Serbia

Abstract The paper initially presents the Serbian legislative framework relevant to the use of minority languages. The ethnolinguistic vitality of the Hungarian-speaking population in Serbia is then analysed, particularly in the Serbian province of Vojvodina. The paper then focuses upon the sociolinguistic survey of Hungarian language use in Belgrade. The emphasis is placed upon the survey responses related to the awareness of language rights among the Hungarian speakers.

Polityka językowa Polski i Czechosłowacji wobec mniejszości ukraińskiej w okresie międzywojennym na przykładzie szkolnictwa Galicji i Zakarpacia

Language policy of Poland and Czechoslovakia concerning the Ukrainian minority in the interwar period on the example of the schooling of Galicia and TranscarpathiaIn the article the international treaties and internal laws and orders of Poland and the Czechoslovakia, which regulate the linguistic rights of national minorities in field of education are studiedInternal legislation of the Czechoslovakia guaranteed free use of minority language both orally and in writing, and provided the right for national minorities to study in their native language in public primary, secondary and higher educationOn the contrary, in the constitutional acts of Poland only the right of minorities to study their mother tongue in public primary schools was guaranteed. Due the prevalence of Ukrainians in Galicia, the Polish authorities with respect to these territories performed different national and language policy aimed at deepening regional differences and assimilation of the Ukrainian population.

An ever closer union . . . of linguistic diversity

The analysis carried out between October 2014 and February 2015 by a team of researchers from the University of Westminster with support from colleagues from across the EU identified the linguistic communities across the 28 EU member states as recognized (or not) by the country’s legislation and the linguistic rights of these communities in education, judiciary and public services. The findings present a complex picture of different linguistic traditions, as well as different levels of minority language use. Education and media appear as the two areas where these minority languages are most used. The diversity of national policies across the EU towards minority languages is highlighted. At the same time, a number of factors that influence the use of minority languages in one context and not in another are identified. Finally, a policy approach that would enhance education in minority languages, strengthen community cohesion and diversity in a globalizing world is put forward.

The Use of Minority Languages in the Media

The Use of Minority Languages in the Media

Minority languages and sustainable translanguaging: threat or opportunity?

ABSTRACTTraditionally, languages have been separated from each other in the school curriculum and there has been little consideration for resources that learners possess as emergent multilinguals. This policy is aimed at the protection of minority languages and has sought to avoid cross-linguistic influence and codeswitching. However, these ideas have been challenged by current multilingual ideologies in a society that is becoming more globalised. Within the field of multilingual education studies, there is a strong trend towards replacing the idea of isolated linguistic systems with approaches that take multilingual speakers and their linguistic repertoire as a reference.This article focuses on translanguaging, a concept that was developed in bilingual schools in Wales and refers both to pedagogically oriented strategies and to spontaneous language practices. In this article, translanguaging will be analysed as related to the protection and promotion of minority languages. Examples from multilingual education involving minority languages will be shown in order to see how translanguaging can be at the same time a threat for the survival of minority languages and an opportunity for their development. A set of principles that can contribute to sustainable translanguaging in a context of regional minority language use will be discussed.

Očuvanje hrvatskog jezika u Kanadi

Očuvanje hrvatskog jezika u Kanadi