Language impoverishment

[Don Osborn]

Thank you Matthew (very belatedly).  I think you are right in disaggregating
the two elements of what I called language impoverishment as you do.  I
wonder however if there are not more connections between them.  IOW, if you
raise a generation of people with deficiencies in both the mother tongue and
the (generally external) language of instruction, what effect does it have
on society-wide range of expressiveness and the vigor of the first language?
In a large population, say Cantonese speakers or Hausa speakers or maybe
even Dine speakers (just to take 3 examples), you will generally have a core
of educated people and perhaps a cultural production which operate with a
more sophisticated knowledge in the language.  (Today, with the potentials
of ICT, this level can be brought more effectively out to more users.)

In a smaller population, even when actively using the language, is there the
same reservoir or performance of the language's richness?  When a few key
elders pass away how much knowledge, including perhaps obscure but important
vocabulary etc., goes with them? (Amadou Hampate Ba's famous metaphor was
that when an elder dies a library burns.)  The reason I ask is that I have
encountered people who tell me there is no word for such-and-such in their
language, but from earlier documentation I knew/found out there was.  How
many other expressions, turns of phrase etc. that mean something important
but not necessarily encountered every day, or could be creatively applied to
something new, are lost without being recorded (or recorded but not returned
through education to the speakers through education)?  ...with the result
being a kind of Newspeak by default (without any Orwellian authority to plan
it).

I guess the matter would have to be settled by some detailed ground level
research.  If you look at satellite images of vegetation in the Sahel it
seems like the desert is now retreating (as per a news item not too long
ago), but down here on the ground the biodiversity is definitely less,
larger trees are fewer, and the vegetation index shows a shift of species.
The analogy may not hold for what is happening with language, but I'd be
more comfortable knowing for sure...

It may be that what happens is an impoverishment of expression and some loss
of vocabulary that is not readily evident and this goes on slowly for a
period, and that this is related to socioeconomic, demographic, political
etc. changes.  And that as that regression continues, at some point it
reaches a "stalling point" or some such threshhold where we can say that the
language is clearly losing structures / expressiveness as in your second
category (corresponding perhaps with another categorization such as
moribund).

Relating all this to Mia's message a while back and my reply, it seems there
are several angles from different disciplines to considering links among
various combinations of language "health" & survival, speakers' skills &
range of expression, and individual & social wellbeing, but no synthetic
approach to seeking a more unified or at least connected understanding of
what's going on.  One particular topic already brought up - that of people
growing up with what amounts to impaired bi/multilingualism (limited
expression/skills in both/all languages spoken; we know of course that the
reason for such impairment is not the multiplicity of languages but a
reflection of the education approach or lack of same) - is something I
hadn't given much thought to until recently.  And now I don't seem to find
much discussion of it, let alone its relations to other hotbutton topics
like language survival.

A lot of heavy thinking remains in all this but the more I get into it
(slowly, being preoccupied with other concerns), the more important it
seems.

Don

----- Original Message -----
From: "Matthew Ward" <mward at LUNA.CC.NM.US>
To: <ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU>
Sent: Monday, November 10, 2003 7:25 PM
Subject: Re: Language impoverishment


> I'm sorry that I can't point you to any studies, but I wanted to comment
> that I wonder if there are not two separate things going on here:
>
> First, there is the phenomenon of people who fail to learn the official
> language used in school sufficiently well, yet the non-use of their own
> mother tongues in education and other contexts means that they lack
> vocabulary to use those languages for many contexts.  (It is not, of
> course, that the mother tongues cannot develop, or have not developed
> the sufficient vocabulary, but if ones education is in another language,
> one might not be able to use ones own mother tongue in certain contexts).
>
> At any rate, the result is people who, in some sense, do not speak any
> language fluently.  One context I've read about this phenomenon is in
> Hong Kong, a decade or more ago--many high school students were not
> particularly fluent in English, especially in terms of grammar, but,
> while Cantonese remained the language they would use at a native level
> of fluency for nearly all social functions, they were unable to discuss
> many school subjects in it, since as it was not used in education past a
> certain level in some schools.  This was actually one of the arguments
> used when the decision was made to make Cantonese the main medium of
> instruction in HK--I think the argument was something to the effect that
> it would be better to gain complete fluency in Cantonese and to learn
> English more as a foreign language, rather than to have people who had
> deficiencies in both languages.
>
> I've also seen this in Taiwan, where people who lacked anything near
> native-like fluency in Mandarin Chinese also had a low level of advanced
> vocabulary in the own mother tongues, and here in Northeastern New
> Mexico, where many native speakers of Spanish express insecurity about
> their ability in English, yet they clearly lack the vocabulary in
> Spanish to discuss certain subjects.  Immigrants everywhere may have the
> some problem--they do not achieve native-like fluency in the language(s)
> of the countries they have moved to, yet they may also lack sufficient
> fluency in their own native languages, largely because their acquisition
> of vocabulary largely stopped after they immigrated.
>
> Second, when you have languages in a totally different
> situation--languages that are truly on the brink, often with only a
> small number of older people who speak it natively, you see not only the
> loss of vocabulary, but also the seeming loss and simplification of
> grammatical structures.  Of course, all languages are known to change in
> this way, even the healthiest ones, but in these cases of dying
> languages, it does not seem that you are dealing with a change in which
> one structure is replacing another, but with a situation where the
> structures are not being replaced, and the language may actually be
> losing its expressiveness.  This is something that, despite popular
> perceptions of language being "in decline," does not normally happen to
> any language.  Indeed, this real loss of expressiveness seems to only
> occur when a language is truly dying.
>
> To me, the first phenomenon is an excellent argument for mother-tongue
> education, and the second is a subject of study for linguists, as well
> as a warning sign of language death.  It is certainly possible that
> certain individuals might be affected by both at the same time, but I do
> believe that they are separate issues.  In many situations in Africa,
> where people who speak large and otherwise fairly healthy indigenous
> tongues, yet are educated in colonial languages such as French, English
> or Portuguese, then probably the first issue is relevant, but for those
> who speak dying languages (which are, as I understand, usually replaced
> by larger African languages, not by the colonial languages) the second
> might apply as well.
>
> Don Osborn wrote:
>
> >I came upon a phrase earlier this year that was used by the author John
> >Marsden in a workshop: "Language impoverishment can lead to frustration,
> >impotence and/or rage" (at the site
> >http://www.pvet.vic.edu.au/boyswebsite/conference.html ).  This was a new
> >take on a phenomenon that I had been thinking a lot about in the African
> >context (young people who learn neither their maternal languages well nor
> >the official languages used in school).  Further research found that
another
> >author, Walker Percy, wrote that one result of language's impoverishment
is
> >"a radical impoverishment of human relations."
> >
> >My thinking is that well before we get to the point of concern about a
> >language's survival, it starts to lose vocabulary and range of expression
> >and creativity: it becomes impoverished. But more than being a stage in
what
> >may ultimately end up as extinction, language impoverishment seems to
have
> >broader social and psychological implications beyond cultural survival
and
> >language policy.
> >
> >I wrote Mr. Marsden, who kindly replied that his statement was the result
of
> >many years of observation and not formal research (which should not
> >depreciate the value of such observation I would hasten to add!).  But I
> >would be interested in learning more about research anyone is doing on
> >language impoverishment in communities and its effects on individual and
> >community life.
> >
> >Don Osborn, Ph.D.         dzo at bisharat.net
> >*Bisharat! A language, technology & development initiative
> >*Bisharat! Initiative langues - technologie - développement
> >http://www.bisharat.net
> >
> >
> >