[lg policy] A request
Christina Paulston
paulston at PITT.EDU
Tue Apr 12 21:46:54 UTC 2011
Thank you to Mr. Zaidi for references which I shall read over the week-
end. Also to Mr. Bellalem for article and to Dave for interesting ref
to books about power -- which all seem to be by sociologists who tend
to totally ignore language. Nevertheless they can be quite helpful.
And of course to Dr Lewis, editor of Ethnologue, for his thoughtful
piece. So this is what we need to do to answer the basic question re
Panjabi lge shift. Interview a hundred 10 year olds ( I am not
certain of best age; we probably need a pilot study to find out) of
farmers' children in Pakistan. ( I am prepared to accept Mr. Zaidi's
statement of the intellectuals not transmitting Panjabi but what
language do the children then speak ? Urdu, Sindhi, English ?) And a
hundred upper class children and a hundred farmer's children in
India's Punjab. For social class read the most appropriate indicator
for social stratification which very well may not be social class in
this case. Mr Saidi can advise us. He uses labels like elites,
intellectuals, educated which indicates to me that socio-economic
empirical proxies may not be good indicators. I.e. some of the
intellectuals and writers may not have much money and would not test
high on an income scale. Caste? Illegal but ? ? Years of
education ? almost always highly respected in Muslim countries.
Those are technical questions/problems; not theoretical but we are
after the facts first, not theoretical concerns of m/m definition and
distribution.
Next, and here I get stuck. Specify the research questions. Let's
say we find ongoing shift in Pakistan and we don't like it. What
difference does it make if Panjabi is a majority or a minority
language -- in either case it is the shift I am concerned about.
Most people will then advocate for use of Panjabi as medium of
education, and m/m status of Panjabi is of no concern -- it does not
explain or predict any of my concerns.
And I shall add as I have many times before, my particular ideology ,
we all have them of different kinds, would predicate that it is not
a tinkering with the school curriculum you need but social reform.
Aha, and we have come full circle. After social reform, m/m status
will make a difference in guiding educational planning and choosing
medium of education as I believe it has in India. Vineeta, Rakesh can
you help us out.
What I so laboriously am trying to make clear, is that you use
theoretical concepts when they can do work for you. If your purpose
is to emphasize -- and here I don't know what Mr. Zaidi wants to
stress, but presumably if he writes what's in his heart, he is likely
to in best case end up with the diasporic Punjabis he mentions, an
entirely different research problem; well if your purpose is to
emphasize from a critical theory perspective the injustice done to
your downtrodden language, then don't call it a minority language with
60 million speakers, call it non-privileged, non-dominant,
subordinate, and your referee can have no objections (unless he is a
government censor).
On Apr 12, 2011, at 6:51 AM, Zaidi wrote:
> Hi
> Here is a link to a trilingual Punjabi web site. It is oprated by
> diasporic
> Punjabis (Muslims and Sikhs) based in the United States. You will
> find a
> number of articles which tell a very sad story of Punjabi in
> Pakistan. These
> writers are intellectuals, human rights campaigners, poets, etc.
> Many of
> them were jailed and flogged during various martial laws in
> Pakistan. Some
> of them have died. You will find good material: http://www.apnaorg.com/
> .
>
> I am sending a link to an article which I wrote some time back. It
> was later
> anthologised in Best of GOWANUS (New York). This article of mine is
> not a
> research paper, but it is based upon my observations and opinion as a
> Punjabi: http://www.gowanusbooks.com/punjabi.htm
>
> Regards.
> Abbas Zaidi
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: lgpolicy-list-bounces at groups.sas.upenn.edu
> [mailto:lgpolicy-list-bounces at groups.sas.upenn.edu] On Behalf Of
> Christina
> Paulston
> Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2011 5:49 AM
> To: Language Policy List
> Cc: Paul_Lewis at sil.org
> Subject: Re: [lg policy] A request
>
> Are we having fun yet? Dear Mr Zaidi, I did not intend to be
> libelous and
> insulting but merely responding to your " request [for] more
> enlightenment
> on it". If you have taken my enlightenment, such as it was without
> knowing
> the intent, purpose, genre, stance or ideology of your scholarship,
> amiss
> I am most sorry. But you see, it is exactly academics - at least in
> America
> - that can argue about facts, data, and theories without taking such
> discussions personally. We find them useful. I refer several
> times to
> certain areas of disagreements between scholars -- it is a fact of
> our
> life. I prefer to think that
> times have changed since Kipling wrote about East and West that
> "never the twain shall meet". But you can be right about that when
> you say
> we live in different worlds , and you can be right about the
> Ethnologue's
> figures. But I don't have to believe it without being insulting. I
> shall
> write the editor and ask how accurate they take
> the Pakistan data to be. It is the primary English language resource
> on data about the world's languages as you know. If you want to
> discuss census data, we can do that too.
> If I were you, I would not bother wasting your time on writing
> rejoinders. They never achieve anything except amusement to the
> readers. A civil question whether you are certain of your data
> merely requires a "yes, I am" and documentation of same.
> I am simply writing this note to say I am sorry if I have upset you
> which seems to be the case. It was not my intention. Christina
>
>
>
>
>
> On Apr 11, 2011, at 10:05 AM, Zaidi wrote:
>
>> Friends
>> I have read this email a couple of times and cannot believe that an
>> academic can write such a libelous, insulting, and mind-boggling
>> composition unless the goddess Fury has taken possession of them. I
>> will not respond counter-libelously because we have come together on
>> this list for better things than mudslinging.
>>
>> Also overwhelming is this author's knowledge of the situation of
>> Punjabi in Pakistan. All sociolinguistic studies on Punjabi in
>> Pakistan (e.g., Mansoor, 1993; Rahman, 1996 and 2002; Imtiaz-Asif,
>> 2005) have said that Punjabi is undergoing a shift. The author of
>> this
>> email lives in a different world. I will write a detailed rejoinder
>> in
>> order to show that not a single observation in this email carries
>> weight. But at a later date because I must complete a couple of
>> manuscripts, and I am running against a deadline.
>>
>> Regards.
>> Abbas Zaidi
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: lgpolicy-list-bounces at groups.sas.upenn.edu
>> [mailto:lgpolicy-list-bounces at groups.sas.upenn.edu] On Behalf Of
>> Christina
>> Paulston
>> Sent: Monday, April 11, 2011 7:09 AM
>> To: Language Policy List
>> Subject: Re: [lg policy] A request
>>
>> As you have all seen, Dr. Schiffman has asked me to keep this
>> discussion on
>> the list. First a few questions to Abbas Zaidi.
>> "My referee" refers to whom? Are you writing a dissertation? Or
>> are you
>> involved in some kind of competition and the referee is your judge?
>> Does not
>> seem likely. My basic question is Why do you have to pay attention
>> to what
>> your referee thinks. In the real world that is of some importance,
>> even in
>> defining concepts and data.
>> Second question, are you sure your data are correct? I don't really
>> believe you and here is why. In 1982 The Ethnologue lists about 58
>> million
>> speakers of Panjabi, in 2005 it lists 60 and a half million
>> speakers, ie a
>> gain of 2 million speakers. Pakistan has a literacy rate of 26% so
>> your %
>> of educated Panjabi speakers is not likely to
>> be high; it is a standardized written language with all forms of
>> oral media, film, radio, and TV, and furthermore it is an official
>> state
>> language in India. All these are factors which contribute to lge
>> maintenance. I have no economic data which would argue for shift
>> ( I am not
>> saying that there aren't any, just that I don't know them ) but if
>> Pakistan
>> Punjab is like the India Punjab I knew, the majority of Panjabi
>> speakers
>> live off the soil, another factor which tends toward maintenance.
>> In short,
>> Panjabi strikes me as a very poor candidate for language shift so
>> why are
>> you doing this study.
>> To keep your referee happy whoever s/he be, I suggest you follow
>> Myers-Scotton's implied suggestion and use majority-minority
>> languages
>> ONLY quantitatively and for comparing or labeling demographic data
>> which incidentally your government is not very keen on having made
>> public
>> (personal communication). So to answer your question, if you want to
>> present Panjabi as a minority language, do not use that term but as
>> Vilfan
>> (1993) suggests instead label it a non-dominant or non- privileged
>> language
>> to which I would add subordinate (Paulston 1994) and make very sure
>> that you
>> discuss the social factors that make you draw such a conclusion that
>> it is
>> subordinate. You have mentioned one, is not used as medium of
>> education.
>> What else?
>> Religion was the rationale for the creation of Pakistan, how does
>> that
>> influence language policies. You will have explicit but also
>> implicit
>> rationales for these language policies. Do you know what they are?
>> I would
>> guess that most of them serve to keep the elites as elites, that is
>> also a
>> form of maintenance that often results in status quo. What about
>> East
>> Bengal; what influence does history have on the language
>> situation? What
>> is your own ideology behind wanting to declare Panjabi as a minority
>> language? What questions do you want to answer?
>> I can't really answer your question about similar situations because
>> I don't trust your description of it. Could you restate the
>> question? You
>> must have in mind something like a situation where the majority of
>> the
>> population speaks a language which is ignored officially by the
>> government?
>> You will find, as you mention with Wolof, tthat different degrees of
>> it will
>> exist in most of sub-Sahara Africa. It will be your task to
>> document the
>> degree. Do private schools teach Panjabi? Does a doctor in a Lahore
>> hospital speak to a Panjabi speaking patient in Panjabi? The
>> Ethnolinguistic Vitality tests are based on categories for LMS that
>> can
>> guide you in setting questions, not for shift but for how much the
>> government ignores or discriminates or exploits or ? ?
>> whatever the social factors are for answering your questions.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Apr 9, 2011, at 9:43 PM, Zaidi wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Dr Christina
>>> Many thanks for your response. Let me be specific. Punjabi is the
>>> majority language of Pakistan (over 60 percent of Pakistanis are
>>> native speakers of Punjabi). But Punjabi is absent from school to
>>> university, media (print and electronic), and all the significant
>>> state institutions. Punjabis themselves consider it a vulgar
>>> language
>>> and educated Punjabis do not speak it to their children. Thus, there
>>> is little intergenerational transmission of Punjabi.
>>> In terms of both Objective and Subjective Ethnolingusitic Vitality,
>>> Punjabi is seriously undermined. In this scenario, a Language
>>> Maintenance and Language Shift (LMLS) study on Punjabi will take it
>>> not as THE majority language, but A minority language. Now my
>>> question
>>> is: Does such a situation prevail elsewhere? Are there any
>>> references?
>>> (I can think of Wolof at the moment.)There is however, another
>>> interesting question: On what basis should Punjabi in Pakistan be
>>> considered a minority language? This may sound strange because I
>>> have
>>> given reasons above to support my view (that Punjabi should be
>>> considered a minority language). But my referee is not satisfied
>>> with
>>> this line of argument.
>>>
>>> I request more enlightenment on it.
>>> Regards.
>>> Abbas Zaidi
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> If by majority, you mean numbers and by minority subordinate groups
>>> in
>>> a nation state, all the native languages of RSA under apartheid
>>> ( and
>>> probably to a degree still) would be examples. ( If you are picky,
>>> you
>>> can probably find tribal languages of less than the 3 million
>>> speakers -- rough estimate of Afrikaans speakers -- which would then
>>> not qualify). If by majority you mean superordinate but small in
>>> numbers, the Afrikaners of same time is an example, the Swedes in
>>> Finland during joint kingdom days, etc. With increasing number of
>>> democratic countries, and increasing clout through actual votes, the
>>> first example is becoming less common. We (sociology of language
>>> people ) don't see very much in the literature of split power
>>> between
>>> groups, e.g. Quebec which had Anglo economic power and Francophone
>>> demographic, meaning majority votes, power but the present language
>>> policies are a result of this split power. The Francophone concern
>>> for Canadian minority language rights has not extended to their
>>> indigenous population.
>>> If I have misinterpreted your question, you will have to define
>>> your
>>>
>>> terms which I suggest you do anyway. It will make for less
>>> confusion.
>>> But I am guilty of the same; I ( and sociolinguists in general)
>>> throw
>>> the concept of power around without much or any analysis of sources
>>> and explication in general. If anyone has a useful definition,
>>> analysis of power, I would love a reference or two. By useful I
>>> mean
>>> as a concept that can do solid work on the language scene. Any poli
>>> sci people out there? Christina
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Apr 9, 2011, at 11:53 AM, Zaidi wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Friends
>>>> In what context(s) can a majority language be considered a minority
>>>> language? Are there some examples?
>>>> Many thanks and Regards.
>>>> Abbas Zaidi
>>>>
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