33.1675, Review: Anthropological Linguistics; General Linguistics; Historical Linguistics; Sociolinguistics: Zuckermann (2020)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-33-1675. Wed May 11 2022. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 33.1675, Review: Anthropological Linguistics; General Linguistics; Historical Linguistics; Sociolinguistics: Zuckermann (2020)

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Date: Wed, 11 May 2022 08:35:37
From: Patrick Heinrich [patrick.heinrich at unive.it]
Subject: Revivalistics

 
Discuss this message:
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/31/31-1672.html

AUTHOR: Ghil'ad  Zuckermann
TITLE: Revivalistics
SUBTITLE: From the Genesis of Israeli to Language Reclamation in Australia and Beyond
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 2020

REVIEWER: Patrick Heinrich, Università Ca' Foscari di Venezia

INTRODUCTION

The first thing that draws the reader’s attention when picking up
Revivalistics is that it does not use terms such as “language endangerment”,
“endangered languages”, or “language death” on its cover. It seems that many
have grown weary of the alarming tone that has accompanied the topic over the
past decades (Hill 2002). The field has moved on, and quantification of
languages in danger of extinction, decreasing numbers of speakers, or
hyperbolic statements such as that the survival of humanity may be at peril if
languages are not saved have given way to more nuanced, situated, and
user-centered accounts. This is a welcome development. The field of study has
matured. There are good reasons for a change in tone, and in structure. To
start with, the study of endangered languages has grown into a large-scale
field and no longer needs to call for attention in the way it had to in the
1990s (Krauss 1992). At the same time, the study of language endangerment has
developed unevenly, with language documentation and language archiving
witnessing a notable upsurge and new developments, while the field of
sociolinguistics has largely remained centered on the by now classical works
of Gal (1979), Dorian (1981), and Fishman (1991, 2001). 

What then can Zuckermann’s book contribute to the sociolinguistics of language
endangerment and revitalization? His new term “revivalistics” brings together
the reclamation of languages that are no longer spoken, the revitalization of
languages where domains of language use have been almost completely lost, and
the reinvigoration of languages where language utility is diminished. The book
tackles revivalistics from two main perspectives. Part One discusses the
reclamation of Hebrew. Part Two discusses practical lessons drawn from the
Hebrew reclamation for other endangered languages in the world, most
prominently Aboriginal languages in Australia. The two parts are only loosely
connected, and one can read them separately. 

CHAPTER OVERVIEW

The book starts with a brief introduction which describes the structure of the
book and defines the term revivalistics. It announces its focus on speakers
rather than on languages. 

Chapter 1 is Zuckermann’s original analysis of the Hebrew language
reclamation. It is a critical account of both the linguistic outcome of this
reclamation, as well as of the linguistic research and political and
ideological debates that accompanied the reclamation process. Already the
terminological multiplicity we find for this case hints at the fact that this
pioneering language reclamation has been fraught with conflict: “Israeli,
Reclaimed Hebrew, (spoken) Israeli Hebrew, Modern Hebrew, Contemporary Hebrew,
Hebrew Jewish, etc.” (p. 23).  Zuckermann argues that the outcome of
reclamation is a mixed language, and he therefore proposes the term “Israeli”
to be most adequate. Two principles, he maintains, have shaped Israeli: the
founder principle and the congruence principle. The former claims that the
first generation of settlers in a new territory or of a newly reclaimed
language has a large impact on the language structure even if the number of
individuals is small. The fact that the pioneers of the Hebrew language
reclamation spoke Yiddish is therefore important. The congruence principle, on
the other hand, maintains that a linguistic feature is more likely to be
incorporated into the revived language if it is shared across many languages.
According to Zuckermann, we must expect these principles to shape any outcome
of language revival and, hence, “one should expect to end up with a hybrid”
(p. 33) in general. 

Chapter 2 is a detailed discussion of crosslinguistic influences in revived
Hebrew on the main levels of description. This chapter is language-focused,
and it is richly documented by examples. The data presented underline
Zuckermann’s claim that revived languages are necessarily of hybrid character.
It is therefore not possible to see revived languages simply as a linear
development from the formally dormant (“extinct”) language to the reclaimed
language.   

Chapter 3 shifts focus from language structures to language ideologies which
have accompanied and rationalized the reclamation process in Israel. While the
processes discussed in Chapter 2 were subconscious, those in Chapter 3 are of
a conscious nature. This chapter provides a detailed discussion of language
nationalism and lexical modernization in Israel. These developments are
religiously and culturally conflicted, leading Zuckermann to observe an
“absence of a unitary civic culture among citizens who seem increasingly to
share only their language” (p. 149).    

Chapter 4 gives details on how language ideology has shaped the work of the
Hebrew Language Academy. The Academy, established in 1953, was tasked “to
direct the development of Hebrew in the light of its nature” (p. 151). This
ideologically contradictory view on language – language as an artifact versus
language as a (quasi) natural entity –  manifests itself in conceptual
tensions. These have resulted in strong prescriptivism and criticism of the
ways that the reclaimed language is used. More recently, the Academy has
started to acknowledge actual speech. Zuckermann depicts how it has been slow
to move from the former to the latter position, and he argues that the Academy
should have been dissolved once the language had successfully been reclaimed. 

Chapter 5 marks the last part on the reclamation of Hebrew. Zuckermann uses
Google Books to analyze publications in Hebrew and reclaimed Hebrew. He terms
this kind of study “culturomics”, by analogy to the study of genomics. He
studies the “sequencing” of cultural concepts encoded in language across
history. This allows him to shed light on historical developments and on the
outcome of language contacts, which leads Zuckermann to conclude that “[t]he
Hebrew revival is complete” (p. 184). Put simply, he shows that the reclaimed
language now fully reflects the communicative needs of contemporary society in
Israel.        

Starting with Chapter 6, we move into the second topic of the book, that is,
considerations of what can be learned from the Hebrew reclamation for
revivalistics elsewhere. Chapter 6 features, among other things, a structured
comparison between Hebrew and Aboriginal language reclamation in Australia.
With this chapter the emphasis starts to shift from historical and linguistic
details to issues such as wellbeing, empowerment, and health. Language
reclamation is predicted to “become increasingly relevant as people seek to
recover their cultural autonomy, empower their spiritual and intellectual
sovereignty, and improve their wellbeing” (p. 187).  To do so, revivalistics
as delineated by Zuckermann needs to be trans-disciplinary and to involve the
study of language from a plethora of perspectives. He exemplifies this by
discussing language revitalization from the points of view of architecture,
music, theatre, and art (pp. 204-206). 

Chapter 7 explores the role of technology in revivalistics. More precisely,
this chapter depicts the use of technology in the efforts of reclaiming the
formerly dormant Barngarla language in Australia, a project to which
Zuckermann has devoted most of his time and energy over the last decade. This
chapter explores two topics. One is a book by a nineteenth century missionary
on Barngarla that is now central in the reclamation processes, and the second
is the appropriation and adaptation of the information in this book in a
Barngarla dictionary app.

Chapter 8 is about legal issues and language rights in the Australian context,
and Zuckermann proposes compensation for linguistic and cultural oppression
(“linguicide”) that lead to language shift and loss. Zuckermann argues that
there is an ethical responsibility on the side of the government to revitalize
Aboriginal languages in Australia, and he explores the legal possibilities of
establishing a Native Tongue Title Fund to which Aboriginal language groups
could apply.    

Chapter 9 concludes this book. It discusses links between language and
wellbeing. Some attention has been paid recently to the fact that language
loss negatively affects mental and physical health. Zuckermann summarizes such
research and, most importantly, adds observations in the other direction (i.e.
language revival improves wellbeing) from his own involvement with the
Barngarla community in the Eyre Peninsula in Southern Australia.

CRITICAL DISCUSSION

Revivalistics is an unusual book in that it consists of two parts that are
only loosely connected. Actual lessons from the Hebrew reclamation experience
consist in showing that language purism is a major problem in language
revitalization, and that the reclaimed, revitalized, or reinvigorated language
will bear strong traces of the dominant or replacing languages that language
activists already speak. In the case of Hebrew, reclaimed Hebrew shows notable
influences from Yiddish. This is an important insight, and this point is
forcefully and repeatedly made in the book. 

“Revivalistics” is meant to fulfill two objectives. One is to distinguish
different sociolinguistic situations of language endangerment. There are many
good reasons for doing so. Reclaiming a dormant language or reinvigorating a
retreating language are very different activities. The second distinctive
function is the transdisciplinarity of the field of study. Zuckermann delivers
mostly with regard to the second point. He does not purposely explore the
social and linguistic differences between types of language endangerment in
his book. However, anybody looking for transdisciplinary ideas of how to study
or practically approach an endangered language will find many new and
promising ideas in this book. These are mainly presented as suggestions that
derive from Zuckermann’s own observation of language endangerment situations
around the world. They are rarely spelled out as a research program or
accompanied by empirical data. Vignettes (and jokes) fulfil the role of
illustrating his ideas. The second part of the book is therefore often more
inspirational than empirical, but that is not a bad thing for a field of study
that has been conceptually stagnating over the past years. 

In large parts the book very directly reflects the life of the author, and
this makes for an interesting read, albeit one that is less structured than
usually expected. This book does not therefore suggest itself as a new
textbook for teaching the subject at hand. The book is too fragmented, does
not give a state-of-the-art overview, is anecdotal over large parts, and does
not introduce or define key concepts and research methodologies. Julia
Sallabank’s (2013) book “Attitudes to endangered languages” would be a more
appropriate choice for a course textbook here. Specialists to the field will
be interested in the book though, particularly in the detailed accounts of
language hybridization in reclaimed Hebrew and in the many research ideas
proposed in the second part of the book. Individual chapters can be assigned
for reading in classes. Chapter 2, “‘Nother tongue: Subconscious
cross-Fertilization between Hebrew and its revivalists’ mother tongues”,
Chapter 6 “Stop, revive, survive”, and Chapter 9 “Our ancestors are happy:
Language revival and mental health” come to mind here. This last chapter on
the connection of language and wellbeing has the potential to move the field
of study into a new direction, a direction where the topic of language
endangerment is placed in a new context. Research into this direction, both
qualitative and quantitative, could well produce powerful arguments about why
language endangerment matters for speakers of endangered languages, and could
lead to further maturation and development of the field of study.   

REFERENCES

Dorian, Nancy C. 1981. Language Death: The Life Cycle of a Scottish Gaelic
Dialect. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 

Gal, Susan 1979. Linguistics: Language Shift: Social Determinants of
Linguistic Change in Bilingual Austria. San Francisco: Academic Press.

Fishman, Joshua A. 1991.  Reversing Language Shift: Theoretical and Empirical
Foundations of Assistance to Threatened Languages. Clevedon: Multilingual
Matters.

Fishman, Joshua A. 2001. Can Threatened Languages be Saved? Clevedon:
Multilingual Matters.

Hill, Jane H. 2002. “Expert rhetorics” in advocacy for endangered languages:
Who is listening, and what do they hear? Journal of Linguistic Anthropology
12(2): 119-133. 

Krauss, Michael. 1992. The world’s languages in crisis. Language 68 (1): 4-10.

Sallabank, Julia. 2013. Attitudes to endangered languages: Identities and
policies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Patrick Heinrich is professor of Japanese Studies and Sociolinguistics at
Ca'Foscari University in Venice. He has coedited the Handbook of Ryukyuan
Languages with Shinsho Miyara and Michinori Shimoji (de Gruyter Mouton 2015)
and the Routledge Handbook of Japanese Sociolinguistics with Yumiko Ohara
(Routledge 2019).





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