Language impoverishment

[Matthew Ward]

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
>
>
>