[lg policy] A request
Dave Sayers
dave.sayers at CANTAB.NET
Thu Jun 2 12:35:03 UTC 2011
Another - perhaps more relevant - book about language and power:
http://linguistlist.org/issues/22/22-1968.html
I haven't seen it myself so I can't vouch for it.
Dave
--
Dr. Dave Sayers
Honorary Research Fellow
College of Arts & Humanities
and Language Research Centre
Swansea University
dave.sayers at cantab.net
http://swansea.academia.edu/DaveSayers
On 19:59, Christina Paulston wrote:
> 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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