Suchergebnisse

Globally many minority and Indigenous communities are searching for ways to reclaim languages that have been marginalized by socioeconomic and political processes. These efforts often involve novel literacy practices. In this article, we draw from ethnographic data in Mexico and Nepal to ask, what are the opportunities and constraints of teaching writing in support of Indigenous language reclamation? Writing is simultaneously an attraction and a source of marginalization or discouragement for learners in both settings. Promoting and teaching writing creates opportunities such as raising the status, visibility, and longevity of Indigenous language education initiatives. Challenges include struggles for legitimacy among teachers and learners and the emergence of new hierarchies among dialects. We suggest that language reclamation efforts can benefit from making the most of the material and social nature of writing and from avoiding hard-line purism and a focus on form, while giving greater consideration to meaning and contexts for written expression.

Frontmatter -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- Chapter 1 Advocating for linguistic equality -- Chapter 2 The moving target of activism: Changing language ecologies in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec -- Chapter 3 Creating knowledge and resources: Strategies in scholarship -- Chapter 4 Connecting community and school spaces: Strategies in primary and secondary education -- Chapter 5 Representing legitimate languages and identities: Strategies in higher education -- Chapter 6 Imagining convivial multilingual literacies: Strategies in community-based education -- Chapter 7 Imagining future traditions: Strategies in popular culture spaces -- Chapter 8 Developing a repertoire of activism strategies -- Appendix A: Language activism strategy framework -- Appendix B: Transcription conventions -- Appendix C: Glossary of common abbreviations, Diidxazá, and Spanish terms -- References -- Index

This book addresses a crucial, yet often overlooked dimension of minority language standardisation, namely, how social actors engage with, support, alter, resist and even reject standardisation processes. We look at standardisation processes as a political domain where social actors use standards as semiotic resources for articulating discourses on society. The chapters in this volume are therefore concerned first and foremost with social actors, their ideologies and practices, rather than with language per se. By considering the perspectives and actions of people who participate in or are affected by minority language politics, this volume aims to provide a comparative and nuanced analysis of the complexity and tensions inherent in minority language standardisation processes. Echoing Fasold (1984), this involves a shift in focus from a sociolinguistics of language to a sociolinguistics of people. How do social actors experience and negotiate these predicaments? Why are standards for minoritised languages sometimes sought after and praised and at other times vehemently contested and rejected? What are the consequences of standardisation projects for different people? It is these questions that this volume considers through case studies of minority language standardisation from around the world. The authors, who come from very different backgrounds with respect to involvement in standardisation processes, draw on ethnographic, historical and discourse data in order to examine standardisation projects in diverse settings. In bringing these case studies and analyses together, we aim to provide both empirical and conceptual insights into minority language standardisation. This volume highlights the role of social actors in the creation and negotiation of standards, and the diversity of marginalised or peripheral speech communities in which standardisation efforts occur. Focusing on ground-level processes and participants allows us to illuminate ways in which projects to standardise minoritised languages echo, reinvent, and at times subvert the characteristics of language standardisation established since the 18th century. Beginning with a reflection on language standardisation from a historical perspective (section 2), we then define our focus on minority/ minoritised language communities and discuss the nature of standardisation projects in these settings in particular (section 3). We conclude with an overview of the volume (section 4).