Killer Languages

B) English or other �killer languages’ can threaten local languages and cause language shift and even death. However, this threat can paradoxically lead to language revival and maintenance. Using two case studies, explain how these two processes can occur, with reference to Foucault’s notion of power/knowledge and resistance, and the following questions:

• What are some of the political, social or economic reasons why people abandon their languages in favour of others?

• What is the role of language in the construction of local, regional, or national identities?

• What social or political strategies can individuals or groups use to resist language shift and death?

When language communities face any language contact situations, different linguistic processes can occur, being the most common language shift and language death, usually of the language community less powerfull. Althought sometimes this contact can, on the other hand, relults in language maintenance and even can results in the creation of new language, such is the case of pidgins and creoles.

Language contact situations can be internal, withing a language community, where two or more regional languages or dialects fight for being the official one. Similarly when two different languages from different communities are in contact, due to colonialism, comerce or any other reason, but not bilingualism is possible, both try to survive.

“Language contact sometimes occurs when there is increased social interaction between people from neighbouring territories who have traditionally spoken different languages. But, more frequently, it is initiated by the spread of languages of power and prestige via conquest and colonisation” Mesthrie, R et al. (2000)

Usually in this contact situation, the more powerfull community threat the minority language. This can be through political, social or economic strategies. According to Skutnabb- Kangas (....) “All official languages are potential threats to indigenous and minority languages, but English is the killer language over all others”

Linguicism is the term to define these situation where a language or a dialect is privileged as the official or standar one. Phillipson (....) explains that linguicism “ It exist among and between speakers of a language, when on dialect is privileged as a вЂ?standard’. Linguicism exist between speakers of different languages in processes of resource allocation, of the vindication or vilification in discourse of one language rather than another- such as вЂ?English as the language of modernity and progress’.”

When that happend, other languages suffer the consecuences and are therefore being threat sometimes. This situation is call by Mufwene(....) вЂ?Langauge endangerment’ He claims, Language endngerment is “the process whereby a langauge loses grounds to another either because it is spoken by fewer and fewer speakers and/or because it is heavily influenced by the competitor, which its speakers seem to command or like better”.

Another process derived from these contact situations, according to Mufwene (....) is Language loss. The primary reason for language loss is the adaptation to changing socio-economyc ecologies. Mufwene explains that this “occurs through the cumulation of decisions taken individually by the members of the relevant population as they face the communicative challenges of their socio-economic enviroments. Language loss is noticed only retrospectively and language endangerment is noticed when the cumulation of such individual responses has progressed so far that proportionally fewer and fewer people find the heritage language useful to their communicative needs.”

Language shift, according to Mesthrie, R et al. (2000) “denotes the replacement of one language by another as the primary means of communication and socialization within a community. An example of this is the case of Norwegian in the USA, where the immigrant language shift without death, because the langauge still survive in its original setting in Norway.

“ a shif from one language to another connot be effected without an intervening period of bilingualism in the вЂ?shifting’ community. In the initial phases of the relationship, the language may show specific distribution patterns over specific domains. More public and formal domains may, by force of circumstances, be allotted to the dominant sociatal language, with more informal and personal domains like the home allotted to the minor language. Language shift involves the progresive redistribution of the languages over these domains, with the home, religion, folk songs and tales usually being the last bastions of survival for the dominated language.

Many shif involve more than one minority language, whose positions are weakened not only by the dominant language but also by each other. Immigrant communities from different areas of origin may develop close associations in the workplace and neighbourhood, which demands the use of a lingua franca. The most expedient, or at least divisive, choice is often the dominant societal language.” (ibid)

CAUSES OF SHIFT

According to Mesthrie, R et al. (2000), economic and demografic factors, as well as institutional support and status are the most common reasons of language shift.

Economic factors

“Economic changes are by far the most salient of the factors leading to shift, though the relation is neither necessary nor sufficient. The juxtaposition of different speech communities is frequently brought about by invasions, seeking of refuge, immigration of workers, or trade. All of this have an underlaying economic motive. In many countries, modernisation, indudtrialisation and urbanisation often lead to bilingualism in a vernacular