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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I'd like to read King. I haven't, so I might
be off base, but aren't stratification, sociogeographical isolation, and
disparities forces which help maintain languages and cultures?
If these problems didn't exist in Brazil, my feeling is that all the Indian
communities would've switched to Portuguese by now. I don't know the
sociolinguistic dynamic in Ecuador and I think it's great<FONT
face="Times New Roman" size=3> that indigenous people there have won a
political place in the wording of the constitution. However, I wonder
how much Quechua is really benefiting from this Indian
zeitgeist. If the situation is like Brazil, then I would bet
that the Indians who were instrumental in bringing about these political changes
do not speak their Indian languages well, if at all. I don't doubt all
this has had a positive social-psychological effect on minority children and
within their communities, but does this mean they are speaking more
Quechua?</FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Stan</FONT> </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=rrr28@drexel.edu href="mailto:rrr28@drexel.edu">Rachel Reynolds</A>
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A
title=lgpolicy-list@ccat.sas.upenn.edu
href="mailto:lgpolicy-list@ccat.sas.upenn.edu">lgpolicy-list@ccat.sas.upenn.edu</A>
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Monday, January 12, 2004 7:16
AM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> RE: printability and
standardization</DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT><FONT
face=Arial size=2></FONT><BR></DIV>I am wondering why no one has quite
mentioned that language is just a single part of the ethnic/racial
stratification scene in the United States (and elsewhere). There is only
so much that educating people about language can accomplish when race
relations have a lot to do also with clean water supplies, prison, health care
disparities (Christina mentioned this!), sociogeographical isolation of the
poor, the impetus towards empire, enduring and changing commercialization of
black bodies and sounds, etc. etc. etc. The efficacy of language
consciousness education depends of course on historical and cultural contexts
of other forms of consciousness raising and the ethnic/class struggle (i.e.
timing is everything). Someone mentioned Kendall King's book earlier on
Quechua, standardization and the classroom where, for example, in the
introduction King points out that her ethnography takes place in a setting
where indigenous people in Ecuador had just won a political place in the
wording of the constitution and that the wide ranging effects of this will
have mattered at a more pervasive level than the efforts of a single
educational consortium. Nonetheless, this educational consortium arose
at the time of political change and was probably more effective because of its
correlation with the zeitgeist. (that last part is me talking, not necessarily
King whose book I do not presently have by my side). That's related to
why King concludes that language revitalization may not necessarily fully
reinstate languages within all domains, but that it has a positive
social-psychological effect on minority children and within their communities.
(again, I hope I've summarized that accurately).<BR><BR>Wasn't it Marvin
Harris who points out that changing superstructural concerns from the top,
like language and its ideologies, have less likelihood of affecting the
infrastructure or the structure of a social group? While changes form
the base, in the infrastructure and the structure will have wider-ranging on
the superstructure? When and how are minority language planning efforts
likely to change the structure, I guess, is what I'm asking...<BR><BR>Rachel
Reynolds<BR><BR>At 05:51 AM 1/12/2004 +0200, you wrote:<BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE class=cite cite="" type="cite"><FONT face=arial color=#0000ff
size=2>Christina's comment reminds me of a remark made by a Navajo graduate
student of mine many years ago: by moving to the city, she knew it was
unlikely that her son would grow up speaking Navajo, but at least she
wouldn't have to carry water a mile or two every day. </FONT><BR><FONT
face=arial color=#0000ff size=2>Of course, those who stayed on the
Reservation are speaking Navajo less and less.</FONT><BR><FONT face=arial
color=#0000ff size=2>Bernard</FONT>
<DL><FONT face=tahoma size=2>
<DD>-----Original Message-----
<DD>From:</B> owner-lgpolicy-list@ccat.sas.upenn.edu [<A
href="mailto:owner-lgpolicy-list@ccat.sas.upenn.edu"
eudora="autourl">mailto:owner-lgpolicy-list@ccat.sas.upenn.edu</A>] On
Behalf Of </B>Christina Paulston
<DD>Sent:</B> Sunday, January 11, 2004 9:54 PM
<DD>To:</B> lgpolicy-list@ccat.sas.upenn.edu
<DD>Subject:</B> Re: printability and standardization<BR><BR></FONT>
<DD>I must express myself extremely badly to be so misunderstood. Of
course a person can be literate in more than one language or dialect - I
read some seven languages, eight, myself. We are not, that is, I am
not talking about a linguistic problem but a social. Of course the LSA
comment "from this perspective" they noted, was perfectly sound. It was
the Black community across the country who rose up in protest at having
AAVE imposed on them and you can give them all the linguistic information
you want and it is not going to help.
<DD> What about South Africa, now with 11 official
languages? Many Afrikaners for "pedagogically sound" reasons now urge the
African population to send their children to mother tongue schools -
exactly the same policy enforced under apartheid for reasons of
segregation. Parents prefer education in English for their children
- are you going to tell them they suffer from false consciousness ( a
singularly brilliant concept, that)? There are as always other
circumstances, quality of teachers, texts, etc but parents still want
English. And I think it should be their choice.
<DD> The problem of course becomes worse when the
children and the parents disagree over that choice - which is not uncommon
with immigrant groups. I just object to linguists playing omniscient
gods and recommending options for life decisions on the basis of
linguistic criteria. Most people want a decent life, at least for
their children, a good job, good health care (Bush should take note), a
secure old age, etc, and if that necessitates another language, they don't
care. Of course they can remain bilingual but the children usually don't
think it is worth it.
<DD> Etc. My very last comment, Christina<BR><BR>
<DD>----------
<DD>From: Ronald Kephart <rkephart@unf.edu>
<DD>To: lgpolicy-list@ccat.sas.upenn.edu
<DD>Subject: RE: printability and standardization
<DD>Date: Sun, Jan 11, 2004, 11:15 AM<BR><BR><BR><BR>
<DD>At 11:02 AM -0600 1/10/04, Felicia Briscoe wrote:<BR><BR>
<DD>...There also seems to be an underlying assumption in much of the
recent writing that
<DD>bilingualism is either very difficult to attain or that it is someway
is detrimental to the person who is bilingual. I find this a very
strange assumption. Why can't a person be fully literate in AAVE and fully
literate in standard English. Why is it so often posed as an
either/or option?<BR><BR></DD></DL><BR>I think part of the answer lies in
what anthropological linguist MJ Hardman calls our linguistic postulates:
specifically, the importance of singularity. This manifests itself in all
sorts of ways not only within our language but also how we think about
language, as well as more widely: one "right" answer, one god, preference
for individual over collective work, "most valuable players," the
totalitarian nature of our corporations, even the prescriptive insistence on
"he" rather than "they" as a generic pronoun. And of course, "one
language."<BR><BR>See: Hardman, 1978, Linguistic postulates and applied
anthropological linguistics, in Papers on linguistics and child
language</I>, edited by V. Honsa and M.J. Hardman-de-Bautista, 117-36. The
Hague: Mouton.<BR><BR>-- <BR>Ronald Kephart<BR>Sociology, Anthropology,
& Criminal Justice<BR>University of North Florida<BR><FONT
color=#0000ff><A href="http://www.unf.edu/~rkephart"
eudora="autourl">http://www.unf.edu/~rkephart</A><BR></U></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML>