ELL: Cultural production

[Lars v. Karstedt]

> Speakers of a minority are sometimes socially isolated from other speakers
> (e.g. because all their relatives who speak it are deceased). In such cases,
> cultural events are at least an opportunity to meet other speakers and 'come
> out' as speakers of a stigmatised language. They are social occasions and
> offer an opportunity for the audience too, not only the performers, to speak
> the language.
>
> I think that regaining pride in a language (as well as practising it!) is an
> important step in promoting it in all domains.
>
> Yours
>
> Julia

[second post]

> I think this discussion started with revitalization strategies and reversal
> of language death. So, stable multilingual societies are not germane here.
> But you are certainly right there.
> I also take it for granted that the discussion was centered around modern,
> Western-like societies, not hunter-gatherers in the Kalahari desert. There,
> again, things may be different.
> But if a language is threatened in Europe, US, and the like, I guess it is
> because its speakers are shifting to another language for most "high" uses
> of the language. "Traditional" culture is not one of these; "modern" life
> is. To stress traditional culture does not seem a good strategy in order to
> reverse the tendency: if you want to revitalize Guernesiais (Guernsey Norman
> French) do not do a poetry-festival, try to have McDonald's or Coca-Cola do
> ads in it. This is a PRACTICAL encouragement to use a language, because it
> makes the language "trendy", appealing, etc. (well, maybe not to
> everybody...).
> Best,
>
> mauro
>

I think both, Mauro and Julia have a point here. But the most
important factor in saving a threatened language is the number of
first language speakers and that is, naturally, the number of
children who learn the language (be it as mono- or bilingual
speakers). I may add some personal experience from Amrum, a
German island off the North Sea coast, where I conducted fieldwork
on the island's dialect of Frisian called Öömrang. There are only a
very few Öömrang-speaking children (probably about ten). The only
situation where Öömrang is spoken is at home, basically with
parents/grandparents. There where two cases when kids (in both
cases pairs of siblings) where brought up Öömrang-speaking but
ceased to use the language as soon as they entered (monolingual
German) kindergarten. Even at home they wouldn't speak Öömrang
anymore. I think this illustrates Mauro's point: Speaker's home as
linguistic environment is too limited to give children the idea that
Öömrang is something that really matters in the outside world. It
doesn't even need to re-design McDonald's signs (by the way, in
Quebec it's "poulet frit à la Kentucky" instead of "Kentucky fried
chicken") but an Öömrang-speaking storekeeper, teacher, bank
teller etc. would probably do. These people are there, they just
don't practice their language publicly and this is where Julia's point
gets in: the attitude towards minority languages matters as well. A
person being proud of his mother-tongue will more likely practice it
whenever he can than someone who deems his mothertongue
being primitive, un-modern, un-educated etc. and therefore rather
uses the (official) majority language.

Best, Lars




Lars Karstedt
Bredeneschredder 7
22395 Hamburg
Germany
lkarstedt at uni-hamburg.de
(040) 604 54 53
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