In this chapter, we look at diverse communities who struggle to preserve their heritage languages or who might be interested in launching revitalization programs. We reflect on what it can mean to be a minority or endangered language community and how we can characterize different types of communities. We also look at the implications and challenges for language revitalization that should be considered when taking into account distinct types of communities. The concept of ‘community’ requires some clarification. As a starting point for this discussion, the community, for the purposes of language revitalization, can be considered any original or newly formed group or network of individuals. These individuals may live in a specific place or may be geographically dispersed, but they are linked by various kinds of interactions and relationships (including those based on both face-to-face and virtual social networks), and share some aspects of their identities and goals. Each community is inherently heterogeneous, variable, highly dynamic, subject to change, and sensitive to all kinds of different factors and circumstances. Communities are usually comprised of distinct groups of speakers, and are maintained or reproduced by different interaction networks.
We have to point out that the ‘concept’ of revitalization is also blurry and by no means well defined in the literature. Let us just stress that revitalization, as well as several other similar metaphors derived from the biological sciences, have been loosely applied to a wide range of situations, which often differ significantly. They vary from scenarios where only a few speakers prevail with a very limited use of the language (e.g. the Peninsula of Baja California, Mexico, where, for example, Kiliwa has some five speakers left), to communities with about a million speakers and a still pretty robust use of their language and future viability (e.g. Yucatec Maya in the Yucatec Peninsula, Mexico). Some languages are spoken in large communities, some in very small or dispersed ones. Some are still used in relatively isolated areas, while some are used in urban zones where they are exposed to intense contact with other languages. Some languages are valued and recognized, others are associated with trauma, shame, or poverty. In dealing with different communities we must be sensitive, flexible, and open to discussion and deep reevaluation of related attitudes in order to start any revitalization project. A strict definition of revitalization is less important than finding effective ways to recover the use of an endangered language in a specific community.
‘Revitalizing’ a whole community is a fiction or a utopia. Linguistic and cultural revitalization is usually developed by specific groups or individuals from a community, who take the lead in ‘reviving’ the language. Such activists are motivated by a range of diverse language ideologies, which may, at times, be contradictory and conflicting. For example, plans for revitalization may be met with opposition, indifference, skepticism, or, on the contrary, overenthusiasm, depending on distinct stakeholders.
In order to provide a general typology of such highly heterogeneous language revitalization communities, we will first attempt to provide an overview of their complexity. The field of language revitalization is directly linked to the process of language endangerment and language communities, each with distinct types of ‘speakers’. Endangerment refers to a continuum of language use in a specific tongue; the threat of extinction is always a matter of degree. Endangerment is, in fact, faced by most of the languages of the world, which is extremely telling of modern social and political conditions of multilingualism and globalization. Current estimations of the number of tongues spoken vary between roughly six and eight thousand, the majority of which survive in different states of at least some sort of precariousness. They range from ‘dormant’ languages with very few, if any, speakers, to those with some levels of vitality, most of which comprise communities with a couple of thousand or hundred speakers or even fewer. ‘Stable’ languages are usually national languages, protected by law, institutions, and other forms of infrastructure as provided by a specific state or political organization. It is estimated that they constitute only some 30 percent of the world’s linguistic diversity. Estimates regarding the number of languages still spoken in the world are based on a number of criteria, many of them being imprecise, ideological, and/or political; deciding on where a language or a ‘dialect’ begins often stems from political and ideological notions. For instance, within the Maya family, Yucatec Maya, Mopan, and Itzá are considered separate languages, mainly because the speakers of the first group dwell in Mexico, whereas the other two reside in Guatemala. In Scandinavia, Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish are recognized as distinct languages, spoken in three different countries, yet linguistically they form a ‘dialect continuum’ of regional variants that are mutually intelligible to differing degrees. Another interesting and less known example is the Wymysiöeryś language in Poland, which faces obstacles to achieving official recognition, since the basic criterion in the law is that a regional language cannot be a ‘dialect’ of any other national language. The argument employed against the recognition of Wymysiöeryś is its alleged status as a ‘dialect’ of German, despite a unique historical trajectory, linguistic features, and a low degree (or even lack) of intelligibility with German.
The causes of endangerment encompass a broad range of factors, including the historical consequences of colonialism, genocide, the slave trade, and exploitation, accompanied by discrimination, racism, political domination, economic disadvantages, etc. Postcolonial heritage and the effects of globalization have resulted in a global crisis for languages, the worst that the world has ever experienced. Its effects can be compared to ‘the great dying’ of species in the remote past as well as to modern processes of accelerated reduction in global biodiversity. Nonetheless these global trends also provoke grassroot responses from local communities. Such responses provide an especially important starting point for any revitalization project.
However, revitalization efforts should consider the specific conditions and situation of the group or ‘community’ in question. These conditions include not only the degree of language endangerment, but also the motivations, ideologies, goals, aims, desired benefits, and internal politics of its members. Thus awareness of the diversity of communities and linguistic situations needs to be considered while planning and undertaking any (re)vitalization strategy. We must emphasize that there is considerable overlap between distinct types of communities and their speakers: any typology should be considered a continuum or even a kaleidoscope of continua. In the following sections, we describe certain general features and characteristics that many communities share. However we should not forget that the complexity and combination of factors that affect each group, in fact, make each community unique.
‘Original’ or Ancestral Communities with Different Forms of Language Transmission
Groups that continue to live in traditional lands and territories and were established in a more or less remote past can be considered ‘ancestral communities’. In the present time of linguistic unification, most communities that use their own heritage tongue or language variant that is different from a national or dominant language face the threat of language loss. They may have different degrees of language transmission as well as different forms of language socialization. Many of them suffer displacement and linguistic conflicts, that is, an ideological, functional, and political struggle between the use of the local tongue and the imposed, dominant language. In some of these communities the ancestral language is still spoken, but younger generations have lost interest and proficiency; the natural transmission of the language is weakened or broken. Skills in the heritage tongue vary considerably; there are groups of speakers who have become monolingual in a hegemonic national language after passing through a stage of substitutive or replacive bilingualism. This may, for example, be the result of school trauma, especially in residential schools where students were forced to leave their communities and home territories, and abandon the tongue that they learnt at home, as in Australia, Canada, or the USA. Imagine literally having your mouth washed out with soap or standing in the burning sun as a punishment for speaking your language. Unbelievably these practices still occur in some countries. Latin and North America are particularly good examples of the impact that school policies have on language. Across these continents boarding schools and, more recently, ‘bilingual schools’, have become efficient tools for eradicating Indigenous languages. Similar practices have occurred in other parts of the world, especially in postcolonial contexts or countries that adopted strong nationalistic policies aimed at cultural and linguistic unification of their citizens (Russia, postwar Poland, China, Japan, etc.). In addition, pressures on shifting communities are often linked to economic motivations, including the linguistic requirements of the job market and individuals’ desire for social advancement. Typically parents will also be pressured not to pass the heritage language to new generations.
Yet there are interesting cases of resistance to language displacement, including the vital use of an endangered language in settings such as religious rituals, the market place, and other public domains. These kinds of situations are fertile ground for the particular types of (re)vitalization projects that we describe here as ‘communities of learning or practice’ (see later). Moreover there are also emblematic cases of language recovery and resilience, as in Euskara (‘Basque’) and Catalan, which were forbidden in Spain in the era of the Franco dictatorship (from the late 1930s until the mid-1970s). Both are now coofficial languages in their respective autonomous regions, yet they still face serious threats and challenges.
Māori, spoken in New Zealand, is another interesting case, with its famous ‘language nests’ – a methodology consisting of speaking the ancestral language almost from the womb. Even though Māori’s vitality is now a fact, with official recognition, support, and institutional use, this does not mean that it is no longer endangered. This is telling of the difficulties in stabilizing a threatened language; despite its relatively successful revitalization, the Māori language is not free from constant challenges and conflicts, even from within the community. For instance, the vitality of Northern Māori varieties is much higher than that of the Southern ones, known as Kāi Tahu, which are in an advanced state of shift. The Māori community has been trying to recover Kāi Tahu for over two decades, dreaming to replenish the South with Māori and reversing language shift. Yet one of the main problems is the conflict between the so-called obsolescent Southern Māori varieties and the vital Northern ones.Footnote 1 This can be seen in the fact that some Northern speakers even mock Southern varieties. This intolerance can happen within language communities, but also in mainstream society. In our work with Indigenous communities we have come across lay people, and even anthropologists, who value certain varieties more than others. These are often varieties that exhibit influence from the dominant language and are viewed as ‘impoverished’ or ‘inauthentic’, etc.
Thus, in ‘ancestral communities’ we often find complex situations when it comes to language maintenance and shift, a continuum with clear internal differences within the same language. Many subvarieties can be associated, for instance, with different generations, as is the case of several Indo-American languages. These range from ‘monolingual’ or traditional varieties, to highly innovative varieties that may borrow heavily from the dominant language. Such differentiation within the larger language group, as it occurs in specific communities, depends on various factors, including the status of the heritage language, the territory where it is spoken, contact with other languages, the role of migration and the nation states’ language policies, etc. Other key factors include the specific ideologies, motivations, attitudes, and goals of speakers. It is important to emphasize that in the same region there may be distinct types of situations of language retention and shift, ranging from conservative groups of speakers of monolingual varieties (e.g. the elders), passing through high levels of bilingualism (e.g. younger generations), to groups within the same community who now use the hegemonic or national language as their first tongue (e.g. children). In the same geographic area, we can also find ancestral communities that have already lost their heritage language entirely or in part.
Often strong traces of the ‘lost’ language are left in the so-called interlanguage. In this scenario, speakers have not completely acquired the colonial or national tongue, but rather developed a version of the dominant language. Examples include Indo-American Spanish or First Nation peoples’ English, which exhibit strong (lexical, phonetic, and structural) influences from the Indigenous languages that were previously or are still spoken in the area. Such scenarios are abundant in almost all parts of the world. In the case of ancestral communities whose traditional tongue has been reduced to an emblem, for symbolic use only, or who have lost the tongue entirely, revitalization efforts must be oriented toward awakening a ‘sleeping’ language, which had not been spoken for a while and is thus ‘dormant’. In these cases, the few last speakers often belong to the eldest generation. One example of awakening a sleeping language is the revitalization of Manx on the Isle of Man, which was brought back to use only after the death of the last speaker, Ned Maddrell – a poet who lived in the isolated village of Cregneash on the island – in 1974. This case shows that the commitment of a group of activists can change the fate of a language, at least in the short- or mid-term.
Even today ancestral communities are typically under intense pressure from dominant languages as well as discriminatory or racist language ideologies (see also Chapter 7). The latter usually come from mainstream society and can also be adopted by speakers themselves. Such ideologies are usually linked to the presumed lack of economic value of the language, which leads speakers to question its utility and even its status as a self-standing language. These kinds of ideologies are evident in self-destroying stereotypes such as ‘it is only a dialect, it cannot be written’, etc. This is often the case for variants that are heavily influenced by the dominant language, which are therefore considered ‘corrupt’ and ‘mixed’, lacking ‘purity’, ‘authenticity’, and/or ‘legitimacy’. Communities may also experience internal political struggles regarding language ownership, local language policy, and language choices; for example, what the future language of the community should be, and if there is any value in keeping or restoring the heritage tongue.
A frequent phenomenon in communities experiencing language shift is purism, an ideology focused on eliminating any features coming from the colonial language. Purism can become an extremely negative force in language maintenance, since purists, who are often people with a powerful status in the community (for example teachers), propose to eliminate any feature coming from the national language. This often hinders the use and development of the local tongue in the way that it is commonly spoken, increasing linguistic insecurity and favoring language shift. For example, both younger and older speakers can be reproached or stigmatized for their way of speaking, depending on the situation and the policy that local purists try to enforce. Yet purism can be turned into a positive force in revitalization programs, depending on specific local conditions. This seems to be the case with the Maya rappers in Yucatan, who have recovered the hach, or ‘real Maya’, due to its presumed wider repertoire and ‘authenticity’. The best recommendation is to avoid favoring any variety or register of a language and to promote community members’ acceptance of different contact varieties so that they can contribute to the richness and ecology of the language.
Exiled, Dispersed, or Resettled Communities
Some ancestral communities were forcibly exiled or dispersed for historical reasons; some have been completely exterminated due to invasion and aggressive colonization. This happened to the Taino during the Spanish invasion of Cuba in the sixteenth century, and in Tasmania, where the last person solely of Tasmanian descent died in 1905. In cases of almost total genocide, the few survivors that speak the ancestral tongue are the so-called last speakers of a language. Examples are found in many parts of the world, including the native groups of Australia, the USA, Salvador, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay. Some of those groups are survivors of genocide, as in the case of Nawat/Pipil speakers in Salvador. After the genocide of 1932 they were relocated to other areas of the country, and the traumatizing experience resulted in language loss and forced change of identity. However, even in such dramatic historical circumstances, speakers of Pipil have been identified among the oldest generation, which permitted the launch of revitalization activities. In such cases, however, awakening a language must be closely linked to dealing with historical and personal trauma as well as social healing. For example, in the case of the Pipil it was common to deny speaking the heritage tongue to avoid being killed.
Yet bringing back the ancestral language is often a powerful source of healing and empowerment. One such example is the Diné/Navajo in the USA, for whom language cultivation in schools has become crucial to the recovery of the language. Another case is that of Lemko communities in Poland. Lemko speakers were exiled from their ancestral territories in the Carpathian Mountains almost overnight during the Operation Vistula of 1947. Some were sent to Ukraine, but most of them were resettled to the western region of Poland and the post-German territories, whereas others were confined to postwar concentration camps where the death toll was dramatically high. They were purposefully settled among Polish speakers to foster their linguistic and cultural assimilation. Only a few managed to return to the ancestral region: their houses and lands were occupied and they had to purchase land in their own home territory. They now are a minority in an increasingly Polish-speaking area, which, along with political pressures, has made language maintenance very difficult. Those who stayed in the new lands in the western part of the country experienced even more challenges due to dispersion and severing bonds with their homeland, which was a fundamental part of Lemko identity.
Similar situations have been experienced by many groups of Native American nations, allocated to reservations that were often away from ancestral land and divided among several locations assigned by the US government. Such resettled or dispersed communities are particularly exposed to language loss due to the severing of links between an ancestral tongue and ancestral land, which has a number of devastating consequences. Such groups and communities present continua of language maintenance, with different types of speakers who range from monolinguals in the heritage tongue, to bilinguals and monolingual speakers of the imposed language. In such communities there is also a common type of survivor who does not speak the heritage language; in these cases revitalization efforts would have to be based on reviving the language (the most famous case is Hebrew).
Diaspora and Migrant Communities
Forcibly resettled and dispersed communities are in many ways similar to diasporas of immigrant communities living in urban or other areas (e.g. Veneto in Chipilo, Mexico, or Mennonites in Latin America). These also include the Rom (also called Gypsies), who speak Romani and live in several parts of the world. They are often openly discriminated against by both mainstream society as well as the state, and not officially recognized (France, Colombia, Mexico, Poland, etc.). A common scenario in diasporic groups is language loss within one or two generations, due to the lack of opportunities to use the ancestral language outside of the home. However, at least some of these communities keep their languages as secret codes, which is also a form of ‘spontaneous revitalization’, meaning an unplanned form of revitalization, that does not have an ‘external’ agent instigating or accompanying it. In these cases, groups maintain their language as a form of ‘in group’ communication, as in Romani. These types of communities are remarkably diverse. Some keep strong ties with their homeland (e.g. Mexican Indigenous communities in the USA or Polish communities in the USA and the United Kingdom). Some retain their languages, as is often the case of the Chinese diaspora, and some keep the language partially or create new varieties. The latter includes the para-Romani varieties within the Rom diaspora in Europe, such as the so called Caló in Spain. Linguistic rights of such communities are not recognized by states and therefore they usually do not appear in any censuses.
Different patterns of mobility are associated with diverse types of exodus. These range from permanent migrants (e.g. several Mexican Indigenous groups in the USA or the Turkish population in Germany or the Netherlands) to temporary migrants. An ethnic group can also exhibit mixed patterns and strategies of migration that change over time and in response to political or economic circumstances. Examples include several groups in the USA or the Central American population who relocate to Mexico but then return to their homeland periodically or at least occasionally. In this case, due to the sociolinguistic environment and the languages to which they are exposed, the diaspora situation often leads to reduced repertories in the heritage language. It also results in the creation of neo-speakers of neo-urban varieties, and ‘receptive’ speakers, who can understand but do not speak the language, e.g. children.
Another term that has been proposed with regard to persons who grew up listening to the heritage language but did not become active speakers is ‘latent’ speaker.Footnote 2 There are also ‘rememberers’ of dormant languages, and several types of bilinguals (e.g. incipient to almost coordinate bilinguals, that is, speakers who master the two languages almost perfectly and are able to separate them). They continuously face the colonial heritage as it manifests in many forms of discrimination, economic and social disadvantage, as well as covert, and often open, racism. Within the great diversity of migrants, we can also identify ‘voluntarily assimilating’ speakers who want to abandon their heritage languages as soon as possible to integrate into mainstream society. However we also find groups of speakers who, on the contrary, reaffirm and even empower themselves as immigrants in countries like the USA. This is the case of the Maya of Yucatan, who form a vigorous enclave in the San Francisco bay area, with around fifteen thousand speakers.
Communities of Practice and Learning
‘Communities of practice’Footnote 3 and ‘communities of learning’ comprise a further category of community. They are a newly described type of group, which deliberately develops social revitalization networks. In the area of language maintenance and revitalization the focus of these groups is on collective efforts to enhance mutual learning and communication, and mobilize available resources. A central goal of such initiatives is to design and carry out specific activities that can positively influence existing practices and situations. Such communities include individuals from different fields who are united in their goal to stop and reverse language shift. Most notably, but not exclusively, these include language activists, linguists, and anthropologists. They may create partnerships with members of the ancestral community who are interested in language revival, or form multidisciplinary and multiethnic teams who are interested in achieving the same goal: language revitalization. Challenges they face involve finding novel ways to empower speakers, creating revitalization methodologies through diverse types of collaborations between several stakeholders and generating external support for revitalization programs. Such groups can also include activists from one or more of the ancestral communities, who are united by the goal of keeping their language alive, despite adverse ideologies, attitudes, and educational policies.
An example of the creation of this type of community is the Language Revitalization, Maintenance and Development Project in Mexico, led by Flores Farfán. This project attempts to improve and develop participants’ communicative performances and mastership of different language genres, going beyond language abilities per se, to generate highly proficient professionals, such as actors. By engaging in the production of videos or creative writing, the project aims at reactivating speakers’ language competences so that they can become proficient speakers and professionals. For instance, after participating in the project, one of the female participants on this program went on to work in the Indigenous education sector in the Balsas region of Guerrero as a bilingual teacher, where she developed community workshops for relearning Nahuatl.
The project actively engaged activists and language leaders from around Mexico in practical training on a range of subjects, including: coaching revitalizers, creating language activists’ self-documentation with revitalization in mind, script writing, planning and producing their own books, managing illustration programs, and producing local, culturally sensitive educational materials. This resulted in the creation of language games, animation videos, and books, which are disseminated to children during community workshops led by language leaders (for more details see Capsule 16.6). Also in Mexico, John Sullivan and Justyna Olko carried out a series of interdialectal encounters for the speakers of Nahuatl as well as participatory workshops for reading historical texts created by the ancestors of modern Nahuas and discussing them in the modern variants of this language (See Capsule 12.1). These initiatives have resulted in the creation of networks of engaged language activists (see Chapter 12). Another similar initiative has been the Engaged Humanities project aimed at extensive capacity building and connecting engaged scholars and language revitalization activities all over the world (see Capsule 12.2).
This discussion of course does not cover all possible scenarios. There might also be communities who are only interested in a very reduced use of their languages, often described as symbolic or postvernacular use. In such cases, the active presence of the heritage tongue can be limited to greeting formulas, selected culturally relevant terms, or songs. There are also such communities that do not want to use or revitalize their traditional language at all and it is only linguists who are interested in doing so.
Speakers of Heritage Languages
It is very important to emphasize that language communities are not abstract entities. They are composed of many different kinds of speakers of endangered/minority/heritage tongues and, very often, include individuals who no longer speak them. In much the same way as an awareness of diverse community types is important in processes of language shift and language revitalization, the role of distinct kinds of language users is also key. Even in communities where the language is still spoken by the majority, it is not uncommon to find families in which the grandparent and parent generations are fully proficient in the heritage language, whereas the children have different levels of proficiency.
For example, teenagers may speak the language with varying levels of proficiency, their younger siblings may understand the language but not speak it themselves, whereas the youngest siblings may neither speak nor understand the heritage language, having shifted to the dominant or national one. In contexts where language transmission has been broken in this way, scholars have identified ‘semi-speakers’, ‘rusty speakers’, ‘receptive’, or ‘passive’ speakers ‘terminal speakers’, ‘latent speakers’, or ‘rememberers’, ‘pseudo-/quasi-speakers’, etc. In revitalization efforts, however, ‘labeling’ individual speakers can be counterproductive and even discouraging or harmful for people struggling to speak or learn their heritage language. Speakers who struggle to develop their language skills do not want to be categorized by scholars implying their ‘incomplete’ knowledge and use of a heritage language. In addition, such ‘labeling’ does not reflect the potential they have for developing their language competence and use. Therefore, any such classifications should be treated with extreme caution; their utility is limited to an assessment of the challenges facing a given revitalization project and they should not stigmatize speakers.
The exact profile of speakers will vary from community to community, despite some common characteristics. Similar to the profile of communities, these categories should be viewed as having blurred and dynamic boundaries, existing within broad continua of language proficiency. Here we give an example of a general typology of speakers that is based on the different communities we have worked with in Mexico, especially Nahuas. However the typology can be applied, to a certain extent, to other communities, depending on their unique situation.
1. Selected speakers with a very high Nahuatl proficiency are often the ‘top owners’ of the language. They are specialized in specific types of discourses, such as bride or rain petitions or ritual activities conducted through chants by healers or enchanters. Members of conservative, traditional communities pay high respect to this type of speakers and hire them on special occasions. Recovering such genres of speech in communities that have lost them might be one of the ways of revitalizing the language, giving it prestige and expanding its linguistic repertoires. In these cases specific revitalizing methodologies can be developed.
2. Fully proficient speakers – often scholars, students, writers, or activists – who are conscious users of the language and who reveal a huge capacity in the language in any domain; some of them hold purist attitudes toward the language and avoid loanwords and code mixing. They are usually bilingual with different degrees of influence from their mother tongue in their Spanish. Some use an almost ‘standard’ Spanish, whereas others clearly exhibit at least some influence from Nahuatl.
3. Quasi/almost monolingual speakers whose proficiency in Nahuatl is very high and who have limited contact with the Spanish-speaking mainstream society. These speakers are usually elders and often females, although they also include adults, young speakers, and even children who only start learning Spanish when they begin attending school. Empowering these speakers is an important strategy for revitalization. This can be achieved, for example, by legitimizing them at the school level and reestablishing intergenerational language bonds that might be weak.
4. Fluent bilingual speakers from traditional communities with unbroken transmission who either still use the language in their home community or who have migrated but continue speaking whenever they visit the community and sometimes even when they are abroad. The use of language and adaptation skills in different domains varies, but generally their proficiency is very high. There is even a trend to acquire a third language, such as English as in the case of Maya Yucatec speakers in the San Francisco area in the USA. This type of migrant shows that migration is not always a displacing feature, but can in fact be a revitalizing force due to the strong identity ties speakers develop while living far away from their homeland.
Depending on the region and community of origin, some of these speakers resort to heavy code mixing in certain situations. For example, this is sometimes seen in teenagers or young adults who learned the language when growing up and use it at home and among their peers but who received no school instruction in it. Sometimes it is impossible to differentiate this category of speakers from less fluent speakers. Furthermore, their proficiency may vary depending on the domain or the topic of conversation.
5. Bilingual speakers who are socialized in the heritage language in increasingly bilingual homes, sometimes learning it from their grandparents or other family members. Their use of the language is limited to basic domains and their vocabulary and use of grammatical structures is reduced; some of them purposefully omit loanwords and code mixing, especially in the presence of teachers or researchers. Spontaneous speaking on a wide variety of topics requires considerable efforts on their part. As with other categories, the distinction between this type of speakers and other kinds of asymmetrical bilingual speakers is fluid. Such individuals’ proficiency exists on a continuum. Some of them learned the language at a later age, when they were teenagers or young adults. This may have been due to pressures from the community and their expected participation in domains such as commercial or ritual activities. Alternatively, they may have been motivated to learn the language for personal reasons. Speakers who are self-motivated to learn the ancestral tongue later in life often become committed teachers and can be important agents in revitalization efforts.
6. Insecure or ‘dormant’ speakers who learned the language as children but have not been using it regularly or for an extended period of time; some use it in very limited domains and on specific occasions. These language users are typically members of communities with broken language transmission and/or migrants with a recessive use of the heritage tongue. This broad category includes speakers who only use the language under pressure or for specific purposes (for example in commercial exchanges). We can also find second language learners who try to recover their mother tongue or, on the contrary, individuals who decided to stop using it. In general, their speech is characterized by heavy borrowing, code mixing, and code switching. They often exhibit difficulty and insecurity in expressing themselves. Such speakers are frequently ashamed of their reduced language skills, a possible prelude to language loss if revitalization actions are not taken.
7. ‘Receptive’ or ‘latent’ speakers whose competence is restricted to understanding the language to differing degrees. In specific communicative situations they may function adequately with no difficulty in understanding. These situations may include farming or other work places, family reunions, (often religious) festivities, and the market place. Depending on the degree of contact with other more fluent speakers, this type of speaker has different degrees of comprehension of the endangered language. Activating such speakers can become an important part of revitalization efforts, helping them move from ‘listeners’ to ‘speakers’, who then may develop a high level of fluency in the language.
8. New speakers who are already fluent in the colonial/dominant/national language but attempt to recover their mother tongue and use it as a second or even third language. In the case of Nahuatl, this type of speaker has varying degrees of Spanish proficiency. In turn, this can have varying degrees of impact on their Nahuatl use, affecting all levels of the language (for example pronunciation, morpho-syntax). New speakers are very important, often essential, for language revitalization projects. As with other continua, this group of speakers also includes a diversity of individuals, encompassing people who are ‘symbolic’ speakers, that is, Spanish monolinguals with no real intention of recovering the language, who use only a few formulaic words and phrases for political reasons (for example being identified as an in-group member). Such symbolic speakers are in contrast to new speakers who are really committed to recovering their mother tongue.
Conclusions
As we have shown, language revitalization efforts take place across very broad and diverse situations and communities, and involve many types of speakers. All endangered languages and their speakers are in a permanent state of flux, existing in complex language ecologies where heterogeneity is the norm. This should be taken into account and respected; all revitalization projects must understand and deal with such complexity in order to design and develop well-informed and efficient strategies to reverse language shift. In addition to pointing out the diversity of situations, linguistic variants, speakers, proficiencies, attitudes, motivations, and goals that exist, we also want to warn against applying biological metaphors to the context of language endangerment and revitalization.
Such metaphors can be harmful when we consider, for example, that in the biological sciences, revitalizing a species can be done through intervention and even genetic reconstruction. However, when working with people and their languages, we should focus on the agency of human beings as a fundamental aspect of recovering endangered languages. For this reason, when considering any revitalization project it is important to account for the cultural strategies and practices of communities and speakers, as well as the different goals and outcomes they aspire to. By comparing distinct kinds of communities and speakers, we can conceive (re)vitalization as a continuum ranging from dormant languages to highly vital and viable languages that are, nevertheless, still threatened.
Therefore, the range of possible, and often complementary, efforts made by different actors, including academics, can be envisioned as attempts aimed at (re)vitalizing, (re)covering, (re)claiming, (re)evaluating, (re)versing, (re)creating, and (re)activating endangered languages. The many scenarios and kinds of ‘communities’ and ‘speakers’ we have outlined in this chapter can hopefully serve as useful starting points for developing additional recommendations and points of reflection for future revitalization projects, which are focused on good practices and sensitivity toward local diversity. One of several possible practical goals could be, for example, to engage with many different kinds of speakers in joint and collaborative revitalization efforts, creating a sense of ‘community’ by reestablishing and strengthening language bonds and identities between different generations and diverse types of speakers.
6.1 The Community of Wymysoü
Wymysoü (Wilamowice) was founded in the thirteenth century by colonists of Germanic origin. It started as a small village, then in 1818 it became a town with around 2,000 inhabitants. The number of people in Wilamowice did not increase as rapidly as in the surrounding villages because a relatively large proportion of the population were students, who left to study in other cities and then remained there. Many of them were Catholic priests, who were sent to parishes far from their hometown. Moreover, Vilamovian merchants used to travel all over Europe and stay in big cities, where they had commercial interests. The biggest colony of Vilamovians was in Vienna, where there were a couple of hundred, and in Cracow, where there were also about a hundred. The Wymysiöeryś language has never been spoken outside Wilamowice and the two colonies of Vienna and Cracow. Today in Vienna there are some people who speak Wymysiöeryś, but those in Cracow became assimilated into Polish culture.
The community structure of Wymysoü before World War II was complex. There were five social strata: intelligentsia, big farmers, merchants, small farmers, and servants. In the nineteenth century there were also weavers, who used to have their own way of using the language. Marrying people outside of Wilamowice or even outside of one’s own social stratum was not favored, but merchants used to marry Jews and people from Vienna. Servants in the town were often Poles and Germans from surrounding villages, and they married Vilamovian servants. There were also strong Jewish and Rom communities in the area.
The occupation of Poland by the Nazis and the following period under communism destroyed this multiculturalism. Those Jews and Rom who could not emigrate to escape the Holocaust were murdered in concentration camps. After World War II, the Vilamovians were sent to postwar concentration camps in Russia and Poland. The Polish communist authorities issued a decree forbidding people from speaking Wymysiöeryś and wearing Vilamovian folk dress. They also expelled the Vilamovians from their houses for thirteen years. At that time their Polish neighbors developed highly negative attitudes toward Vilamovians. The oldest generation remained Wymysiöeryś, but the younger one used to inform their children that they should be Poles, and not reveal their Wymysiöeryś identity. Many people married Poles because this provided protection against persecution. This was also a response to negative ideologies, which said that Vilamovians should mix their blood because, due to their previous endogamy, they were mentally handicapped. Even Vilamovians said that it would be better if their language and identity died.
But at the beginning of the twenty-first century the young generation ‘woke up’ and started discovering the past of their parents and grandparents and developing their own identity. As a result, the language and other elements of Vilamovian culture started to become present in public life again. Now there are plenty of Wymysiöeryś/Vilamovian identities: people feel Vilamovian and Polish, Vilamovian and Austrian, or just Vilamovian. Some people say that the young people are doing a great job in revitalizing the language and local identity. But many local activists and politicians say it is dangerous to bring the old Vilamovian identity back – an identity that is not Polish. They do not understand that times have changed and that the young generation is not bound by the old negative attitudes. The young Vilamovians are creating their own identity by selecting parts of the old Vilamovian culture and taking inspiration from other cultures – thanks to visits to such places as Nahua communities in Tlaxcala and the Isle of Man. They are building a new Wymysiöeryś identity and a new speaker community, which are not the same as the one at the beginning of twentieth century. And they have a right to do it, even if they work against the Polish nationalist mainstream, or even against some of the norms and expectations represented and expressed by the older generations.
6.2 What Is Community? Perspectives from the Mixtec Diaspora in California
If we define ‘community’ broadly as a group of people who share certain linguistic, cultural, and/or social practices, then the notion of community is fluid and dynamic, and the relationship between people and communities may be many to many rather than one to one. In language documentation and revitalization, community has traditionally referred to a village or set of villages that share a common language or set of language varieties. However, especially in the digital age, even this narrower notion of community is not bound to physical topography, and in the postcolonial age, communities may find themselves distributed over large and discontinuous spaces and media. Here we briefly consider the notion of community in the context of the Mixtec Indígena diaspora in California, which may serve as an example or point of comparison for other diasporic communities around the world. We use the term Indígena to refer to Indigenous peoples of California whose traditional communities are located in Mexico or Central America, instead of the broader term Indigenous, which could also include Indigenous peoples with longer histories in present-day California.
Traditional Mixtec communities in Mexico are numerous and situated in western Oaxaca, eastern Guerrero, and southern Puebla states. The political, social, economic, and environmental effects of colonialism have led to large-scale emigration of Mixtec and other Indígena peoples to other parts of Mexico in the 1930s and to the United States in the 1940s–1960s with the Bracero Program, increasing in the 1980s. In California, diverse Indígena populations have settled in and around San Diego, Los Angeles, Ventura County, Santa Maria, Salinas, Fresno-Madera, and other locales. The settlement of large numbers of people from Mesoamerica has led to the emergence of a new, diffuse, and multiethnic community that Michael Kearney termed Oaxacalifornia.
Indígena workers are now an integral part of California’s enormous agricultural economy. However inequality and discrimination often migrate along with the people who suffer these forms of injustice; Indígena workers may be marginalized as relatively recent arrivals in the USA on the one hand, and then further marginalized and discriminated against within the larger migrant labor force for being Indígena. They are often lumped into ‘Mexican’ or ‘Latino’ groups with whom they do not identify, and they are not provided adequate medical, educational, legal, and labor services.
Families are shifting to Spanish in many origin communities in Mexico, and especially in the diaspora. Many youth and children who do speak their native languages feel compelled to abandon them, both because of bullying and discrimination by their peers and due to the dominant society’s lack of recognition of their language and culture. The result is that youth have been uprooted and disconnected from communicating in their languages, which threatens the linguistic and cultural continuity of their communities. In response to their economic and social challenges, and the discrimination that they face, Indígena peoples have created binational and local community organizations, such as the Mixteco/Indígena Community Organizing Project of Ventura County, California, to enhance collective efforts and share resources and information.
Ventura County is now home to as many as 20,000 Indígena people, most of whom are Mixtec, and they speak at least fifteen Mixtec varieties, not all of which are mutually intelligible. Each individual has a unique set of language practices that may include their Indigenous language, English, and Spanish, depending on how much time they have lived in the USA, the work that they do, and their personal interests. Most people identify with a ‘hometown’ community in Mexico, but for many, the community they know and experience the most is the diverse Indígena community of Ventura County. As this example illustrates, we should not essentialize or stereotype Indigenous languages and people, for example, by assuming that they only live in far-away traditional homelands. In order to meet everyone’s linguistic and social needs, we should recognize that there are diverse and diaspora communities outside of traditional areas and people may belong to multiple communities.
6.3 An Introspective Analysis of One Year of Revitalization Activities: The Greko Community of Practice
In this capsule, I shall briefly describe a series of actions recently taken toward the revitalization of Greko, a critically endangered Greek language, spoken in southern Calabria (Italy), which favored the constitution of a community of practice.
The first attempts to revitalize Greko began in the 1960s, when a group of mostly young people started to actively campaign for the safeguarding of this language and its culture. Since then, many associations have been founded, and very many cultural activities and local/regional programs have been implemented with great opportunities for local development. All this has brought about a very significant change in the attitude of the community toward its own language, which moved from being hidden and despised to being a source of pride. However associations have not been able to secure the intergenerational transmission of Greko at home, resulting in a continuous decrease in the number of speakers. Furthermore, in the last ten to fifteen years, there has also been a progressive reduction of activities in support of the language.
For this reason, five years ago I launched a new summer school ‘To Ddomadi Greko – the Greko week’, thanks to the support of the old but still-active association Jalò tu Vua. In my mind the Ddomadi Greko had to be a one-week injection of language, enthusiasm, and stimuli to shake up once again the community’s interest for Greko and to draw attention to its critically endangered status. My ambition was to (re-)create a strong connection between local people, especially the young generation, and their heritage language, allowing them to discover the richness of their own native place. The school included four hours of language teaching every day, a one-hour cultural seminar, and one afternoon excursion. The result was extremely positive, to the extent that two years ago, we gathered together a group of young participants, potentially interested in engaging with language revitalization.
The first step was the creation of a WhatsApp chat to practice Greko every day, favoring in particular the use of voice messages. Whoever joined the group had to use the Greko words that they knew, even inserting them in an Italian phrase, and if there was a mistake, someone had to correct it and give a grammatical explanation for it. A very useful tool that really facilitated texting in Greko was Grekopedia, the smartphone application with an Italian–Greko Greko–Italian dictionary that my father and I had launched a year before. However, to avoid the creation of a dead chat, we all decided to undertaking several tasks, the first of which was the setting up of the Facebook page ‘To Ddomadi Greko’ (following success using social media to promote other languages – see Chapter 17), which would cover grammatical topics, traditional songs, stories, memes, and gifs in Greko (on the model of the Colectivo Tzunhejekat facebook page for Nawat).
As trivial as it might seem, this process immediately got great results since it gave visibility to the group, encouraging other people to join in, including Calabrian emigrants and foreigners. Most importantly, however, the management of the page required the group members to practice Greko every day, to find or to create Greko material to post and, crucially, to communicate with the rest of the group. This continuous exchange enormously accelerated their learning process and fostered great collaboration within the group. Tandem activities too, even carried out on Skype for those living outside of Calabria, facilitated team building, a crucial and sensitive part of the revitalization program. To this end, we also used theater as a key tool to quickly improve language skills and a great space for teamwork. The most important results were not the activities per se, but the fact that the management and supervision of them was fully carried out in Greko among people living in different parts of Italy and Europe. In less than a year we managed to build up a community of practice whose main goal was the revitalization of Greko.Footnote 4 Crucially all this was actively supported by many older Greko speakers who constantly joined us in our events and we would regulalrly visit them at their place as part of our core activities. The collaboration between the group of new young speakers and the older ones was our strength as it fostered the creation of strong affective bonds among the young members of the group and across generations. This became the driving force of our work and also had a huge impact in terms of language learning, since younger people have progressively stopped learning new words and grammatical rules from books and began learning them by transmission, by living the language in this new kind of community.
Introduction
While there are many reasons that we might initially have for wanting to preserve a language, as detailed in the earlier chapters of this volume, people may also have underlying assumptions about the processes of language revitalisation that go unexpressed. These are generally known as language ideologies, which we discuss in this chapter. These ideologies are often expressed and materialise in the form of language attitudes. Below, we show how language attitudes can affect attempts to save an endangered language; it is difficult to plan any positive language revitalisation without ensuring positive attitudes towards the minority languages (people must actually want to use the language if revitalisation is to be successful).
One of the most important tasks, then, for any language revitaliser is to listen to the various attitudes expressed within the community towards their endangered language and to try to work out what ideologies lie behind these attitudes. Such attitudes will be varied, possibly contradictory and nuanced, of course, so we need to be extremely sensitive in dealing with them. Without doing so, it is unlikely that language revitalisation will be successful. It is also very important that attitudes held by the majority language community are taken into account. Majority views affect minority language speakers, as they can influence the community and discourage actual and potential speakers from using the language. Challenging negative impressions held by majority language speakers is therefore an equally important task for language planners. In this chapter, we explore some of the more prevalent ideologies and attitudes found in minority language communities. In doing so, we aim to raise awareness of these issues amongst language planners and minority language activists, helping them to revitalise their local endangered language.
Language Ideologies
Pick up any textbook concerned with minority language sociolinguistics, or start reading an article which discusses the situation of any given minority language and, in all likelihood, it will not be long before the concept of ‘language ideology’ is encountered. Therefore, we start this chapter with a consideration of the term ‘ideology’ as it relates to languages and, in particular, to minority languages. There have been many attempts to define what a language ideology is, and some of them are quite complex. This complexity can be confusing for activists engaged in revitalisation. At the opposite end of the scale, however, some writers have used the term without any careful consideration of what they actually mean when they write ‘ideology’, sometimes using it as an alternative for ‘attitude’. We consider that there is a significant distinction between the two terms and that, for minority language activists working on preserving their languages for the future, an understanding of the difference is very important in helping them plan their revitalisation strategies.
For our purposes here, we understand language ideologies as those beliefs, feelings, and assumptions about language that are socially shared and which attempt to make sense of different forms of the language (dialects in relation to a standard language, minority languages in relation to majority languages, youth speak in relation to older generations’ way of talking, etc.) and their place in society. Most importantly, ideologies of language represent assumptions about particular linguistic forms and what they say about the people who use them. For example, we often attribute certain social values to a speaker who prefers to use one language over another, one who uses slang or swear words regularly, or who speaks with a particular accent. In this sense, language ideologies are closely connected to language stereotypes, where languages (and their speakers) can be attributed as having certain characteristics, even when these characteristics cannot be objectively demonstrated. For example, claiming that language A sounds more beautiful than language B, or that someone ‘hates’ the sound of a particular language, are both claims rooted in language ideology, which can then emerge through explicit statements which we call ‘language attitudes’. (See below for the difference between language ideologies and attitudes.)
This idea is best demonstrated by considering a common language ideology that can be found in many societies: the so-called standard language ideology. The standard language ideology refers to the belief that a particular form of language, usually the variety that is used by the most powerful group in society, is superior in some way to other varieties of the language. The standard variety of a language is often based on written forms, which have been unified in some manner and are typically acquired after many years of formal education. Even though this variety may actually be spoken by only a minority of the population, the vast majority of speakers of the language recognise it as somehow ‘superior’ and ‘prestigious’. Even in the case of many European national languages, which have only been standardised recently (e.g. the Finnish or Czech languages), they gain the status of the language that should be used and protected by the state. Ability in this standard language justifies the privileged societal positions of its speakers, whereas a lack of ability in it often results in exclusion from such positions. Thus, a standard language ideology can make this situation seem fair and equitable – both to those who benefit from it and to those who are disadvantaged by it.
Differences between Ideologies and Attitudes
It can thus be seen that ideologies operate at a subconscious level and that people may not be aware of their existence. However, ideologies can become apparent through people’s attitudes towards a given language or language variety. Language attitudes are the explicit evaluations of particular languages and language varieties, expressed by people as opinions and beliefs and, more negatively, as prejudices. They influence people’s thought processes and their specific language choices. We refer to the Irish example here. In the Republic of Ireland, the Irish language is viewed favourably by over 60 per cent of the population, who agreed with the statement: ‘Without Irish, Ireland would lose its identity as a separate culture’.Footnote 1 However, according to the Irish Times, quoting the 2016 census figures, the percentage of people using Irish as a daily language in the Gaeltacht (the officially designated Irish-speaking areas) has fallen by 11 per cent. Outside of the Gaeltacht, where just over 90,000 people live (2.1 per cent of the total Irish population), some 53,000 people in the rest of the Republic use Irish as a daily language (1 per cent of the total population).Footnote 2 Given that there is a generally positive view of the language by most adults in the Republic, we might expect more people to be using the language for identity and cultural reasons. However, it would appear that being favourably disposed to a language does not translate into actual use. In thinking about these results, it is worth questioning the nature of the survey itself – if the questions had embraced a more complete spectrum of attitudes (including, for example, the perceived usefulness of the language, and its economic worth) then the results might have looked very different.
Common Language Ideologies in Minority Settings
Researchers have noted a number of ideologies that are regularly found in minority speech communities. The linguistic anthropologist Kathryn WoolardFootnote 3 has identified two of the most important ones as being:
The ideology of authenticity, which ‘links the value of a language to its relationship with a particular community’. To be considered authentic, speakers must recognise the speech variety as being ‘from somewhere’, and with a particular local quality. Thus, in many minority language situations, one of the markers of a good speaker is the ability to use a particular dialect, or to speak using a recognisably local accent. If such markers are absent, a linguistic variety may be seen by the community to lack value. In revitalisation contexts, authenticity can prove to be a problem when new speakers acquire the language. These learners may not see themselves as sounding sufficiently natural compared with native speakers. In turn, native speakers may ‘close ranks’, and exert a sort of ownership over speaker identity, privileging their position as ‘authentic’ speakers. This state of affairs can lead to frustration from learners, sometimes deterring them from using the language altogether.
The ideology of anonymity, which holds that a language is a neutral means of communication equally available to all users. This view is universalist in nature and seeks to include all members of a speech community, however they may have acquired the language. Anonymity is the opposite of authenticity, in that membership is not evaluated by how ‘local’ a speaker sounds, but more on how well or how often they use the language. This ideology is closely related to the ideology of standard language, in that some users of a particular language actively avoid using dialectal or local forms and instead use the standard variety. In this way, the ideology of anonymity promotes a shift away from an ‘authentic’ or ‘native speaker’ identity and towards a ‘civic’ identity that regards the minority language as a resource for constructing a cosmopolitan, modernised identity.
These two ideologies can lead to tension in minority language situations. For example, the spread of Irish outside of the traditional Irish-speaking strongholds and into areas previously dominated by English has complicated traditional ideologies of authenticity. Most commonly, native speakers of Irish were from very rural areas and their language reflected this, with highly localised dialects and a very developed vocabulary in the traditional occupations of the west of Ireland, such as fishing and farming. As a result, this group was put forward as ‘ideal’ (or idealised) speakers; when Irish was being revitalised in the early years of the state, language planners gave traditional native speech communities a high prestige status based on their perceived authenticity. This view has remained a deeply rooted language ideology. Yet the rise of a more educated and urban group of speakers in places such as Dublin, Galway, and Cork has resulted in a series of tensions. While the ideology of authenticity positions traditional native speakers as the ‘owners’ of the language, this view has been rejected by language users outside of the traditional Irish-speaking areas, who perceive the language as a symbol of a newly constructed national identity.
Very often connected to the concept of authenticity are ideas about language ownership. In some people’s view, a language is ‘owned’ by its native speakers. This means that their beliefs regarding the ‘correct’ forms of language are seen as authoritative and they have the final say on what constitutes ‘good’ language and a ‘good’ accent, etc. Accordingly, areas where the language is traditionally spoken are often perceived as repositories for the language where people can experience it in its ‘natural’ environment and access an authentic language-learning experience to become ‘real’ speakers. However this commodification (or the objectification) of the language can create tensions between those who were seen to produce the commodity (i.e. native speakers) and those who wished to consume it (i.e. learners); while the ideology of authenticity positions traditional native speakers as language ‘owners’, learners of the language often contest this on the grounds that they too have a right to the language.
Language ideologies based on authenticity can also relate to the perceived usefulness of a language. For a language to be perceived as authentically useful, it very often needs to have a pervasive presence in society – it needs to be seen and heard everywhere – and in that sense, normalised. A normalised (majority) language is seen as the common sense, default option in day-to-day life and official interactions. In a sense, it is the common property of all community members, including those members who also speak another language. The normalised language thus comes to be seen as the most appropriate and most useful means of communication in society. In this situation, transgressing community norms by using a minority language in public may be challenged by non-speakers, who see such behaviour as ‘rude’ or inappropriate. These ideologies can filter through to the minority community where they are adopted, often subconsciously, by speakers who then choose to use their minority language privately, out of the public domain. In Brittany, for example, it has been noted that when older Breton speakers are out shopping in the supermarket they tend to talk in Breton quietly to each other and will switch to French when a stranger walks past them, switching back to Breton only once they are out of earshot.
The challenge facing many minority language activists is to deal with these issues and work with speakers to help them overcome ideological barriers in using the language. If this does not happen, then it may add to the pressure on minority language speakers to switch to the majority language in all situations, including intergenerational transmission to the younger generations. In such cases a sense of shame can develop, which is often accompanied by a feeling of uselessness as far as the minority language is concerned. The majority language comes to be seen as the language of advancement and betterment, and as the way to secure a more prestigious job and the language to raise children in. Linking minority language use with a sense of purpose, a sense of pride, and above all an essential part of the group’s identity, are key to securing a future for the endangered language. Furthermore, and perhaps just as importantly, activists must raise awareness amongst the majority population and attempt to involve them as allies in the preservation and revitalisation of the minority language. There is no magic formula which can be applied universally in all minority language situations and one of the main tasks of activists and concerned speakers in the minority language community is to work out just exactly how to do this, given local conditions and local language ideologies.
The anthropologist Kathryn Woolard has dissected the term ‘ideology’ into four strands: (1) ideology as a mental phenomenon – the domain of the ideational and conceptual; (2) ideology as the foundation of metapragmatics (the discourse of the effects and conditions of language use); (3) ideology as linked to positions of power through discursive practices – the struggle to acquire or maintain power; and (4) ideology as distortion, maintaining the relations of power by disguising or legitimating those relations. We offer some practical ways for language revitalisers to explore these four strands in the concluding section of this chapter.
Language Attitudes
Everybody has beliefs and feelings about languages based on the way that society perceives them and the stereotypes associated with them. They are socialised through various agents, including teachers, peers, family, and the media. Furthermore they tend to relate to two aspects of the community: status and solidarity. Status refers to both the personal characteristics of those who use the language (e.g. if language speakers are perceived as educated and intelligent) and the external image the community or the language itself has (e.g. if it is not perceived as a ‘real’ language but as a dialect of another language). Solidarity refers to the extent that a specific language or variety is associated with group membership and belonging to the community. Evaluations made regarding status and solidarity may be positive or negative, and language attitudes can be seen in people’s reactions to different language forms, practices, and varieties. A speaker’s accent, the vocabulary used, the particular language chosen (especially in the situation of unequal bilingualism, i.e. when minority community members are bilingual in both the minority and majority languages while the rest of population inhabiting a given territory speak only the dominant language and do not consider knowledge of the minority language as important) all give clues about who the speaker is, what their personality is like, their social status, and even their appearance. This evaluation is based on the stereotypes and language ideologies that operate in society and are learned from early childhood. This image of minority language speakers and their language influence how people react to them and how they act towards them. In this way, language attitudes may be seen as a bridge between ideologies and behaviours. Furthermore, because they directly influence language choices, they are key elements of any revitalisation program.
As we have shown, language attitudes are the opinions, ideas, and prejudices that people have towards a language or language variety. For example, some people may think that a language that does not have a written form is not a real language. Others may associate a specific accent with being uneducated, while some people feel shame when using their language in a public place, or feel attacked when other people speak a minority language in their presence. In contrast, some people may feel proud of their language and perceive it as more beautiful than other languages. They may, as in the case of Basque, claim that their language is the oldest in the world, highlighting the uniqueness of their language to create more positive attitudes towards it and secure its future. As we can see, language attitudes are based on language ideologies that are often covert and have been internalised by individuals within a community so that they are perceived as natural.
Language attitudes should be identified and addressed as a core element of language revitalisation. When a community has strong negative language prejudices regarding their way of speaking, their feelings about using the language in different domains are also negative. In this situation, reversing language shift may be very difficult or impossible. In contrast, positive attitudes towards a minority language may inspire activists and community members to act against language shift. Just like language ideologies, language attitudes can also be changed. However, this is a long and difficult process that should be planned at many different levels, including changing negative attitudes that may exist in the minority speech community, and those possessed by the dominant community. The work should target both bottom-up language policy and state language recognition. Through some examples, we will explore some different types of language attitudes and consider how it might be possible to change them.
Negative Attitudes Resulting in Negative Language Practices
Negative language attitudes in the dominant society can have serious consequences for the minoritised speech community, leading to prejudice and discrimination. Negative language attitudes that have been internalised by the group are the most difficult to change. These attitudes are the result of long-term language trauma related to discrimination and the unfair and humiliating treatment of people because of the language they use. Language ideologies and their related language attitudes can be very powerful and can become an instrument of domination. For example, the belief that one way of speaking is less prestigious than another can run very deep. This is particularly true when different methods for oppressing the language have been used, such as banning the language, negative media discourse, physical punishment for using the language, and psychological abuse. In these cases, negative attitudes can be instilled in people’s minds so that they start to treat them as an objective truth. People who are linguistically discriminated against often perceive their language as worthless and a source of shame, seeing it as the cause of their own suffering and misfortune. Wanting a better life for themselves that is free from humiliation and deprivation, they often feel compelled to abandon the language and do not transmit it to their children.
Linguistic discrimination is often the reason why intergenerational transmission of a language breaks down. An example of this is the Breton language in France. The language trauma there was so strong after the Second World War that the number of speakers decreased from 1,100,000 to 200,000 over the course of the twentieth century. This was the result of a combination of several factors, including strong language ideologies associating Breton with the language of uneducated people and poverty, which led people to feel shame when using it in public; linguistic discrimination of Breton speakers at the political and social levels (e.g. social exclusion and hindered access to the labour market); direct persecution of Breton speakers at schools (e.g. corporal punishment of children, or the symbolical punishment of children caught while speaking Breton marked by an object hung around their neck until a stigmatised child caught another one speaking Breton) and the persecution of speakers in other spheres (e.g. Breton soldiers’ traumatic experiences during the First World War when – because they did not understand orders issued in French and were not able to contest them – they became ‘cannon fodder’, with the number of Breton deaths being significantly above the French average).
The effects of this type of internalised language trauma can be seen in the following statement: ‘I spoke the language X and it caused only problems. I want to forget this language and I do not want my children to use it’. When language trauma results in language shift, revitalisation projects must occur alongside efforts to end discrimination and create positive language attitudes, both within the speech community and outside of it. It is often the case that the generation who suffered because of direct language discrimination and did not transmit the language (thus making them the last ‘native’ speakers of a language) are not willing to participate in language revitalisation efforts. However, they should not be left behind. This situation can often cause a sense of guilt for not having transmitted the language. Sometimes this generation can downplay or even deny that linguistic discrimination against them took place. It should be stressed that language trauma can be inherited by the next generation, making any community work sensitive. Efforts to create language prestige should be linked to top-down language policy, recognition of the language, as well as bottom-up activities aimed at showing people that their language is in no way worse than the official one. Language ideologies and related language attitudes should be deconstructed in order to make people aware that they are only social constructs created to deprive them.
Positive Language Practices in the Face of Negative Attitudes
Negative language attitudes and language discrimination may lead to different behaviours in different speech communities. These can be understood as the adaptation strategies of a community and its individuals. These strategies include decisions about what language to use and what group to identify with. In many cases, to avoid discrimination, people abandon their language and choose the dominant one instead so that they are not disadvantaged socially, culturally, or politically. However, social and linguistic inequality and discrimination may also lead people to assert their right to use their language. This is illustrated by the attitude: ‘My language is oppressed so I have to do my best to protect it’.
Many endangered language activists are motivated to protect their language, community, and freedom, by grievances and the rejection of discrimination and persecution. Language activists take on responsibility for the language and the future of the speech community, undertaking different activities aimed at maintaining the language. An important part of these activities is to change the negative language attitudes already internalised by many community members. This can happen at different levels, including: discursive, where the language is described as equal to the dominant one; behavioural, where the endangered language is introduced to public spheres where it was previously forbidden or perceived as inappropriate; militant, where the language is promoted through direct and indirect acts of social rebellion; and political, where official recognition of the language is campaigned for. These activities may be undertaken at both the public and the private level and act as personal ‘testimonies’ for those people fighting to save the language. Through all these activities, and by reversing the negative image of a language, it is possible to gradually change language attitudes.
Negative Language Practices despite the Existence of Positive Attitudes
Changing the language attitudes of a speech community is a multilayered process and does not necessarily lead directly to reversing language shift. In other words, negative language ideologies are sometimes so deeply internalised that even when erased on the conscious level, they still resonate in the actual language practices of people. This attitude may be represented by the statement: ‘I support language revitalisation but I will not learn this language/I will not send my child to the bilingual school’. This situation has negative consequences for revitalisation efforts.
To illustrate this, let us take the example of the Kashubian language in Poland. This language belongs to the same language family as the Polish language and, for political reasons, was treated as a ‘dialect’ of the Polish language (a language ideology). Its prestige was low: it was not recognised by the state and its speakers were associated with rural life, and a lack of education and job opportunities. Moreover, after the Second World War, in the Polish People’s Republic, based on the concept of building a unified – monocultural and monolingual – society, Kashubian speakers suffered language discrimination and many of them had traumatic experiences at schools with regard to their language. Although efforts to maintain the Kashubian language began two decades ago and it is now recognised as a regional language of Poland, negative attitudes and ideologies still influence people’s language practices. For many years, there has been no social acceptance for establishing schools with Kashubian as the language of instruction, the argument being that those children would experience language problems in the future. These attitudes persist today. Gradually, with numerous efforts undertaken at different levels and thanks to language activists who have gradually broken down these mental barriers, the effects of language trauma and language ideologies are being eliminated.
Positive Language Attitudes and Positive Language Practices
The speech community may also have positive attitudes towards their language and assert that it should be protected and used by people in all domains. In the context of minoritised languages, these positive attitudes may result from: speakers’ resistance to discrimination (‘I am prevented from speaking my language but I do it anyway because I want it to survive’); strong positive ideologies related to the language (‘I speak my language and I am proud of doing so’); or successful revitalisation efforts (‘I have learned the language of my community and I speak it to my partner and children’). When there are numerous people with such language attitudes, there is hope for the future of a language. In the last example given, we see a person who did not acquire the language through conventional family transmission but who learnt it at schools, on a special course, or through contacts with the speech community. Moreover, this person has enough motivation to make it the language of everyday life. Finally they have decided to use the language with her or his family despite the fact that it probably has relatively low prestige.
We can say that for a minoritised language to be revitalised, three conditions must be met: people must be capable of using it, having learnt it in the home or through minority language education, they must have the opportunity to speak it, in both private and public lives, and they must have the desire to use it. All of these three conditions are interrelated with the positive attitudes towards the language. To be able to achieve these conditions, there must be a strong language policy with top-down language support. For example, there must be: opportunities to learn the language; the existence of a language infrastructure with support for families who want to bring up their children in the minority language; and job opportunities in the minority language and possibly other economic profits to increase people’s motivation to learn it and use it. Furthermore, the role of media must not be underestimated. Both the language and the speech community must have a positive image in wider society. It is also important, especially for the younger generation, that the use of a language is not uniquely linked with the past and tradition, but also with what is perceived as ‘modern’ and ‘cool’. Therefore, for people to have positive attitudes towards a language, it should be used in all domains of their daily life, from the family domain, to school, work, and social media.
Positive Attitudes towards Multilingualism
Once intergenerational transmission of the language has been interrupted or broken it is important to take into consideration not only the language attitudes of active speakers, but also the attitudes of those who do not speak it. A contemporary minority language community may include native speakers (who may or may not choose to use the language), people who have learned the language of the minority and use it, and those who are indifferent or have negative attitudes towards it. Moreover, there are individuals who are considered members of the speech community and are surrounded by and/or mix with those who do not identify themselves with any particular group, but may be interested in learning and using the language. The ‘speech community’ may therefore also include ‘potential speakers’, who should also be targeted by revitalisation activities.
Therefore, promoting positive attitudes towards multilingualism becomes one of the main aims of revitalisation efforts, allowing new speakers of an endangered language to become part of the community. In this regard, an education system, which is open to both native and non-native speakers, can play an important role. There should be a place where children can learn the language and, preferably, also learn through the medium of this language. The latter is important for changing language ideologies that claim that it is not possible to express everything in the minority language, or that learning in this language causes harm to children. Moreover these educational settings should be of the best quality in order to encourage parents to send their children there. One possible solution is to provide teaching in three languages: the minority language, the dominant/state language, and English (as a global lingua franca). Another possibility is to work with institutions and social media to raise awareness of the benefits of multilingualism. For example, multilingualism raises cognitive abilities and creativity. Moreover, children who speak at least two languages have higher language skills; find it easier to solve problems; to distinguish meaning from form; to listen and remember; and to learn any additional language faster.Footnote 4 These benefits can increase the child’s chances of obtaining a good job in the future and can help them to cooperate effectively with other people. These arguments are based on the intellectual advantages of learning a minority language rather than the emotional, identity-based, benefits. This reasoning may help to create more new speakers and to convince parents from the speech community that it is good for their children to learn and use their heritage language.
Conclusion
Language ideologies which operate at a sub-conscious level express themselves in peoples’ attitudes, opinions, and beliefs towards a given language or language variety. Both language ideologies and language attitudes are very important to the revitalisation process. Therefore the first step when planning new revitalisation strategies should be an examination of the existing language ideologies and language attitudes in a given society or community. Without this knowledge, revitalisation efforts could fail. Recognising language ideologies, such as the ideology of the standard language, of authenticity and ownership, is the first step in overcoming them. The same concerns language attitudes. There is a need to understand attitudes towards the minority language in both the minority speech community members and wider society.
Changing language ideologies, whose power lies in the fact that they are innocuously and deeply imprinted in people’s brains, is a long-term process. The best method to do so is to make people aware of their existence and how they function.
Formal and informal education can be helpful here. One of the primary goals of any revitalisation program is to activate speakerhood and to produce more speakers of an endangered language. Part of this process should consist of familiarising people with the fact that language ideologies are socially constructed and that they can be changed. Informal education also plays a vital role in producing positive attitudes towards the language and motivating people to use it. For example, creating different events and activities for speakers and people who are learning a language to meet can actively encourage them to use the endangered language, even if it is difficult for them. This can also contribute to building a common language identity amongst speakers and creating positive attitudes towards the language.
Media has the power to create a positive image of both the endangered language and the speech community (including native and new speakers). When a language that is otherwise considered ‘not useful’ or ‘backwards’ is presented in the media, online, or in computer games, it can appear modern and attractive, particularly to young people. Another role of the media is to create a positive image of the speech community, minimising their reluctance to use their language in public life. When a speech community is presented as being full of life, new ideas, and resistance, this may also contribute to changing language ideologies and attitudes and, as a result, language practices.
To change language ideologies and attitudes, it is also helpful to strengthen the presence of the endangered language in the linguistic landscape. Bilingual inscriptions signal a collective identity, as well as equality between the endangered language and the dominant language. The presence of an endangered language in the written form augments its prestige and social significance, thus breaking the symbolic domination of the majority group. Numerous studies on ‘linguistic landscaping’ have demonstrated how minority language spaces are symbolically defined through the medium of writing, particularly on street signs, billboards, and signs in public buildings, etc. However we should also bear in mind that some languages have more of an oral presence, and that they are more likely to be heard rather than seen in written form. In these cases, the media can also be used to create a ‘soundscape’, for example, through public announcements in train stations and airports and the availability of radio and TV shows in the minority language, etc. These are important considerations when engaging in language revitalisation planning.
To conclude, when speakers’ and community members’ language ideologies and attitudes are negative, this could jeopardise revitalisation efforts. In order to prevent this, a community should identify existing ideologies and their roots. This will help in understanding language attitudes within the community. We should establish programs aimed at diminishing the impact of negative language ideologies (for example, through community campaigns and activities) and reinforcing positive language attitudes with the use of social movements, cultural activities, supportive language policy, the linguistic landscape, and last but not the least, formal and informal education.
7.1 Language Ideologies in an Endangered Language Context: A Case Study from Zadar Arbanasi in Croatia
Language ideologies can be defined as socially, historically, and politically shaped ideas about language, which often have far-reaching and irreversible effects on language attitudes and linguistic practices. This is the case in the context of Arbanasi, a language spoken by approximately three hundred, mostly elderly, people in the city of Zadar, Croatia. The language has been classified as highly endangered by UNESCO. Based on the Gheg dialect of Albanian spoken by Catholics fleeing the Ottoman wars in the early 1700s, Arbanasi underwent significant linguistic influence from Venetian, Italian, and Croatian, especially in its vocabulary. Today it is not institutionally protected as, among other reasons, its speakers do not claim a separate national minority status. Furthermore, having been classified as intangible cultural heritage in Croatia along with around twenty other minority languages and language variants grants its speakers only symbolic recognition.
The ideologies behind the loss of Arbanasi reflect several highly interrelated features, which are all related to the devalued role that many minority languages have in society. The pervasive attitude among Arbanasi speakers and the wider community that Arbanasi is not a proper language is due to: (a) a high level of ‘mixing’ with other languages, (b) a high degree of variability in both grammar and vocabulary, (c) a lack of written tradition accompanied by the absence of standardisation. Such attitudes are based on the ideology that languages are abstract, stable, pure, countable entities with clearly defined borders; at the same time, this belief sees all other language varieties as less valuable. However, this view often ignores the fact that languages are always a form of social reality and that the selection of a language norm is usually historically and politically motivated. Proponents of this ideology question the idea that languages marked by a high level of ‘mixing’ and/or variability can be perceived as fully legitimate. Consequently many Arbanasi speakers are reluctant to call Arbanasi ‘a language’, and prefer to refer to it as ‘a dialect’ or ‘a speech’. For others, however, it is precisely this linguistic hybridity, that is the fact that it is so highly interspersed with Croatian and Italian (Venetian) influence, which functions as a source of pride and leads them to refer to it as a language in its own right; one that is different from modern standard Albanian (based on the Tosc variety).
Since languages proper are often equated with standardised and written varieties, many believe that Arbanasi, not having been written down, cannot be accorded the same rights as developed national languages. However the desire to prescribe written norms for Arbanasi is only marginally present in the community since not everyone considers it necessary for language learning, and much less so for (occasional) informal texting and similar. A recent attempt to write down Arbanasi using the Croatian writing system also caused heated discussions since many believe that the traditional Albanian-based writing system is more ‘correct’ and more likely to grant Arbanasi a legitimate ‘language’ status.
At a more personal level, linguistic insecurity is visible in Arbanasi as speakers become increasingly aware of language decline manifested mostly in numerous lexical gaps, with words missing even for everyday concepts. Moreover, due to reduced language productivity to create new words in Arbanasi, it is the lexical level that serves as an ideological battlefield; by endorsing either the modern Albanian standard variety (Tosc) or Croatian, (groups of) community members promote their view of a ‘correct’ language. Moreover occasional instances of insisting that there is an original, genuine version of Arbanasi that some, mostly senior speakers, use, only increase the reluctance of many Arbanasi to speak their language. Such a feeling is especially pronounced among those who tend to code-switch a lot and/or insert Croatian and (to a lesser extent) Italian lexical borrowings into their speech. At the same time, the myth that speaking Arbanasi at home will cause its young speakers to make mistakes in Croatian has contributed to the interruption of intergenerational language transmission in many families. This reflects an ideology of monolingualism, which is usually based on the fear that an official, national, or a language of a majority cannot be properly mastered if the traditional language is still in use.
Today, the youngest known speaker is in his early thirties and, to our knowledge, the language is not being transmitted in families (there are no children who are growing up with Arbanasi). There are a few places where the language can be heard in public and one of them is a language course in the city library. This course is a community-based initiative, where mostly traditional and latent speakers gather because it is the only chance for them to use the language. It is also an arena where the different aforementioned ideologies often come into play. Bearing in mind the decisive role that language ideologies and attitudes play in language shift in the Arbanasi context, it is clear that addressing language ideologies at the grassroots level should therefore be the starting point in any revitalisation effort.
7.2 Attitudes towards Guernesiais
Guernesiais is the Indigenous language of Guernsey, Channel Islands (between Britain and France). Traditionally Guernesiais was seen as a ‘poor relation’ of French. French was used in the government, the judiciary, religion, and education, while Guernesiais was used between family and friends. Although the Channel Islands have been associated with Britain since the eleventh century, it is only since the nineteenth century that English has become widespread. English spread quickly (especially once radio brought it into homes) and it is now the dominant language, while Guernesiais has only a couple of hundred speakers: most fluent speakers are aged eighty or over, and there are very few speakers below the age of sixty.
One commonly expressed attitude towards Guernesiais is that it is ‘not a proper language’ but either a dialect of French or a mixture of English and French. In response, language supporters point out that Guernesiais is a variety of Norman, which has a prestigious history – reclaiming prestige is an important principle.
Until the late twentieth century, even in areas where the language was spoken most widely, people assumed that if children learnt Guernesiais they ‘would never know English’. One woman remembered how in the 1950s neighbours told her mother that ‘when she goes to school she won’t be able to learn’ if they spoke Guernesiais (she is now an accomplished musician).
By the early twenty-first century, however, it became clear from media reports and anecdotes that attitudes towards Guernesiais were becoming more and more positive. Speakers started to express pride: ‘In certain company you didn’t speak it – because it made you feel a bit inferior but now it’s the other way round – you don’t feel at all inferior if you know it, it’s completely the opposite you know?’
I conducted a representative survey in 2004Footnote 5 and found overall strength of support for Guernesiais even higher than anticipated: for example, 50.5 per cent disagreed strongly and 25.3 per cent mildly with the statements, ‘It doesn’t matter if Guernesiais dies out’ and ‘Guernesiais is irrelevant to the modern world’. Attitudes towards bi/multilingualism were also much more positive. Although these results were the same across gender, job sector, and geographical origin, as well as proficiency in Guernesiais, people with higher levels of education had marginally more positive attitudes. When the results were analysed by age group, under-18s were found to be slightly more likely to have negative attitudes. Although the difference was minimal, the attitudes of young people are of course key to a language’s future. However several interviewees commented that it is common to reject traditional values in your teens and twenties, but some become enthusiastic about Guernesiais in middle age or later.
This survey included not only Guernesiais speakers but reflected the general population in that only 2 per cent speak the language, and 36 per cent were born outside the island. A crucial factor in this apparent majority-population support for a minority language may be that many of the majority population see Guernesiais as part of their heritage too, not only that of the dwindling number of native speakers; this is even true of respondents who are not of local origin.
On the face of it, such majority support would appear to bode well for the future of the language. Yet not all older speakers have fully accepted a higher status for Guernesiais – some still unconsciously perceive Guernesiais as lacking in prestige. In addition, there is an influential minority who cherish Guernesiais as the language of their youth, and who seem unwilling to hand over control to a new generation or to new speakers. It is often assumed that young people and immigrants will not be interested in Guernesiais, and language maintenance activities can perpetuate this stereotype by focusing on traditional culture. Language activities need to be inclusive to attract people of all ages and backgrounds. It should be remembered, however, that attitudes are not actions: positive attitudes cannot save a language without concrete measures. However, they can lead to public support and funding for such measures.
7.3 What’s the Point of Manx?
Manx is a Celtic language spoken in the Isle of Man/ Ellan Vannin, an island in the Irish Sea mid-way between Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. The last traditional native speakers died in the 1970s; at that point one might have asked ‘What’s the point of Manx?’ Indeed Manx was categorised as ‘extinct’ in 2009 in the UNESCO Atlas of Languages in Danger. But Manx is actively used through revitalisation efforts such as adult lessons, Manx music sessions, preschools, a Manx walking club, bilingual signage, radio broadcasts, conversation groups, and optional lessons in mainstream schools. There is a Manx-medium primary school which teaches all subjects through Manx, with seventy pupils (see Figures 7.3.1 and 7.3.2). According to the 2011 Census there are over 1,800 speakers.
Figure 7.3.1 Language materials in Manx.
Figure 7.3.2 Manx for children.
I don’t get asked the question ‘what’s the point of Manx Gaelic’ too often these days and that probably reflects a change in attitudes towards the language; however, if I do, my usual response is, ‘What’s the point of the Isle of Man?’
Having lived in London for a number of years I’m aware that most people outside of the Island have a very poor understanding of the Isle of Man, which at best consist of a series of clichés such as ‘tax haven’, ‘TT races’, and ‘cats without tails’. Unfortunately many such clichés are peddled by the supposedly liberal press in London too.
In this sense, the revitalisation of the language here is as much about changing perceptions towards the Island as it is about getting people speaking the language. Moreover, if the Island is to rid itself of these misconceptions and lazy journalism, it needs to be telling a different narrative about itself, its history, and its culture: the revitalisation of the language in this sense is a positive news story about the Island that tells a different narrative. We are more than just a well-regulated ‘off-shore’ tax jurisdiction, but an Island entitled to our independence which has a positive story to tell the rest of the world about language revitalisation and identity.
A follow-up question might indeed be ‘who are the Manx?’ these days. The Island has changed fundamentally from that of the last native speakers. Much of the change, but not all, has been good and the reality is that less than half of our community now were born here. ‘What is the language to them?’ Ironically, the language is one of the few things that the last native speakers would recognise about the Island, but if the language is to mean anything these days it needs to be seen as a language of modernity – associated more with the Internet than thatched houses and fishermen. This Island is open to anyone who wants to make it their home (it doesn’t matter if you were born in Portsmouth, Port Moresby, or Port Elizabeth). What’s more, the language and the culture that accompany it can belong to you as much as they belong to someone from a long line of Manx descendants who was born and brought up on the Island.
The Island has changed and will continue to do so; however, the language and culture are stronger than they have been for over 100 years. Although the future will be challenging, there is a growing acceptance from politicians and business people on the Island that the language and culture tell a different narrative for our Island; that is, that the language is forward looking and welcoming to new learners and speakers of different backgrounds.
What languages need, therefore, is a vision: a sense of what has gone and what is possible. But this vision needs to avoid arguments about how authentic modern Manx is, and offer instead a sense of what our languages can be in a rapidly changing world.
‘What is the point of the Isle of Man?’ Therein lies the future of our language.
7.4 Emotions and Relationships in Language Revitalisation and MaintenanceFootnote 6
While working on Jeju Island, South Korea, I had the opportunity to speak to people about what their local language variety 제주돗말, Jejudommal (pronounced [ˈt͡ɕed͡ʑudomːaɭ], aka Jejuan, Jejueo, or Jejubangeon among others) means to them, as opposed to the national language, Standard (South) Korean. Transmission of the speech of the oldest generation has ceased, yet a number of traces remain in the way the youngest generation speaks. Younger people may consider themselves speakers of Jejuan nonetheless, and as much as ‘Jejudommal’ and ‘Standard Korean’ do exist in speaker's minds as entities, so are emotional meanings constructed and assigned to these different ways of speaking. That is, ideological connections with the emotional meanings of language use may even persist in cases when there is no intergenerational transmission.
Jejudommal is regarded as having much richer words to express sounds, feelings, moods, and attitudes, whereas Standard Korean is seen as sounding more ‘sober’, with more clearly definable words. Still, people’s impressions go well beyond language: Speaking Jejudommal is often considered more appropriate in a relaxed, trusting, and intimate atmosphere where emotions may be expressed freely, and where people feel much more connected to their emotional lives themselves (e.g. when talking to close relatives or friends). Contrastingly people associate speaking Standard Korean with having to keep themselves in check, and with leading rational conversations, which purely serve the purpose of communicating ‘cold’ information between people who have to maintain a particular distance. Naturally people often say that they feel more disconnected from their own feelings and expressing them in such situations – a classic example is that of a work meeting.
Isn’t this interesting? When we talk about language revitalisation and maintenance, our attention is often directed towards more ‘objective’, ‘tangible’ things, for example, domains of usage, language materials, education, speaker numbers, and such. Rarely, however, do we talk about the emotional meanings and values that we attribute to the languages that we speak, and also the emotions that our very language choices evoke. Maybe it’s because emotionality is stereotypically considered vague and difficult to measure, or maybe thinking and talking about our emotions may not be considered the most ‘professional’ approach in our revitalisation ‘work’.
What we are trying to achieve here goes way beyond a task where we merely repair a dysfunctional machine; rather we are working towards a profound transformation of deeply ingrained habits – our everyday language choices – which are connected to a much wider web of being human. If that is the case, in language revitalisation we should take into account something that is crucial to us as human beings: our emotional lives, and how they relate to the language choices we make.
Thus it may be worthwhile reflecting on what feelings, thoughts, values, and images you associate with speaking your minority language(s), compared to the dominant language(s) of the majority. How does it make you feel when you speak or hear ‘your language’? Which language variety do you choose in particular situations (certain people in your family, at work, at school, with friends, in a shop, etc.), and why? How would it make you and others feel if you chose to speak a different language from what people are used to in those situations? Feel free to ask your family and friends and many others – the goal is to see what emotional values and meanings are shared between members of your community to use that knowledge productively for language revitalisation work.
Taking on such a perspective may in fact inspire your language revitalisation practice and planning: what if you tried to go about strengthening language use not only by tackling certain domains, but also, with respect to strengthening particular spaces and relationships that appeal to people’s emotions? Similarly how about reflecting on the emotional relationships you forge on a daily basis through your language? Can you help to foster positive emotions connected to the use of your language? Of course, one should not dismiss the insights of language revitalisation studies so far, but I do think that we must acknowledge that we are more than just ‘brains with limbs and organs’ exchanging facts through speech, and that language revitalisation, therefore, must be about more than language. Essentially it’s about being human, together – or in the worst case, alone.
7.5 Nahuatl Language Ideologies and Attitudes
Today Nahuatl is still spoken in several Mexican states, in both rural and urbanised settings (although much less frequently in urban centres). The Mexican National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) reported in 2010 an official population of as many as 1,544,968 native speakers of the language. Nonetheless, in most Nahua communities intergenerational language transmission has drastically been weakened or has broken down entirely over the last few decades. This was accelerated, and in many cases directly provoked, by a pervasive ideology of racism, as well as by school policies. Indigenous children were subject to many forms of violence and discrimination at school, and negative ideologies were internalised by community members. Today such community-driven racist attitudes are remembered by children raised in the 1980s, such as a community member from Tlaxcalancingo in Puebla raised monolingually in Nahuatl by his mother, with whom I spoke in 2014. It took him a long time to learn the dominant tongue well and he was an object of prolonged mockery and humiliation by his peers: ‘Everybody was saying that it sounded funny or that I made them laugh. [I only knew how to say] “Good bye” and “give me permission to go to the toilet.” All my friends with whom we studied were laughing [at me]. I was taking a long time to learn well [Spanish]. They were insulting me, mocking me, [saying] I was an indio, stinker, that [I] bathe myself in a steam bath, that I carry a spittle of cactus and saying other things’.
The heritage language is seen as the most visible sign of the previous, ‘uncivilised’ state of existence, associated with backwardness, positioning indios, a derogatory term for Indigenous people that goes back to the early colonial period, as the lowest, most disadvantaged, and backward social group. As remarked by one of the few remaining elderly speakers in the community of San Pedro Tlalcuapan in Tlaxcala in 2017, ‘Because they [community members] are ashamed, they do not want [to speak], they tell as we are indios, one who speaks Nahuatl is an indio’.
When Nahua people from more isolated (especially mountainous) communities come to nearby urban centres to sell their goods to earn a basic living, or when Indigenous children commute to regional schools, they often experience abuse and discrimination. Language and ways of dressing are perhaps the most obvious identification markers, so they take efforts to hide their ethnic characteristics in order to avoid mistreatment. This discrimination is experienced by members of marginalised Nahua-speaking communities, and is carried out by residents of more ‘modernised’ Nahua towns. A woman from a little village in the Sierra Norte de Puebla, who married into a central Tlaxcalan community and has been living there for twenty years, testified that she was mocked and discriminated against because of her origin, even by members of her new family who are themselves speakers of Nahuatl.
As pointed out by a community member from the Contla region in Tlaxcala, people feel ‘denigrated’ and ‘ashamed’ to speak Nahuatl, while the few conversations in this language are limited to the themes of agriculture and communication with workers who often come from more mountainous communities: ‘We barely communicate in Nahuatl. We speak Nahuatl very rarely with my wife and kids. Sometimes we speak Nahuatl when we talk about farming and the field, when we talk with the workers. We can have a conversation with the people we meet [on the street] if they do not feel ashamed, but there are people who feel very ashamed. One denigrates himself for speaking Nahuatl. Sometimes we speak Nahuatl with the people from the sierra (mountainous regions) who speak Nahuatl, but when it is just us here, well, we don’t’.Footnote 7
Thus, members of native communities situate Nahuatl at the very bottom of the language hierarchy. Spanish is in the middle as a national language and that of the dominant ‘modern’ society. Most recently, English has taken the place at the very top as a symbol of upward social mobility and opportunities. It is associated with technology, business, youth, and popular culture. For members of a community with high rates of migration to the USA, it is also the language of remote opportunities and a symbol of a better life. Spanish, in turn, is linked to all basic aspects of social life, as the sole language of education, politics, work, legal, and public services. When compared with these two languages, Nahuatl’s domains are limited to the household, family, and agriculture, as a lower-status tongue of campesinos (peasants). These attitudes are closely linked to a deep denial of the reasons for language shift, especially in the generation of speakers who decided not to speak Nahuatl to their children. Community members remain largely silent about the reasons and circumstances of what occurred. Some spoke some Nahuatl to their children or speak it occasionally to the grandchildren, but they say the failure is on the part of children and grandchildren who refuse to speak the heritage language. Some elder speakers deny anything really happened: they declare there was no pressure or discrimination, just everybody in the neighbourhood started to speak Spanish. This erasure of recent and painful experiences fits well into a widely shared image of modernisation and peaceful transition for a ‘better status’.
Children who acquire their heritage tongue at home usually learn at school and/or in the community that it has no value. They often choose to pursue a path to a higher social position than their parents by learning English. Most of them will never go back to speaking the mother tongue. But exceptions and new role models are possible. These are the words of a young and successful engineer from a Nahuatl-speaking family in San Miguel Tenango, Puebla, who decided to invest in his skills in Nahuatl and started to promote it in his home community among the younger generation:
‘And at school they say that if you want to find a good job, teach yourself to speak English. So I started studying English. When I started, I said to myself one day, “This English is indeed difficult.” Then I said to myself, “So I am learning to speak English, and what about Nahuatl? I also know how to say [something], and I only do not know how to write it. I do not know how to write it, but I know how it sounds.” And I said, “So, if I have studied to speak English, I should also teach myself to write and to speak my language well”.’ (San Miguel Tenango, Zacatlan, Puebla, 2015)
Talking about minority languages means talking about efforts, strategies, brave people, and perseverance through the years. The success of these processes is closely related to the way that each group understands their very own situation and assumes the required commitment.
This chapter is about the importance of attitudes and the difference that it can make to language revitalization efforts if they are included as a fundamental element. This is based on experience of more than fifteen years of supporting the process of revitalization of the Nawat language in El Salvador. I also include some reflections that have emerged from the perspectives of the two fields that I know best: as a language activist and as a mental health professional. Both approaches are, in my opinion, strongly related in the understanding that language is the reflection of thought.
On the clinical side, I have had the satisfaction of seeing how people can resolve their once problematic situations when, alongside other elements, they take a positive attitude. If human beings are able to change the course of their destiny with this change at the mental level, it is possible to apply this question to a bigger context, such as the group level. What if the speakers of a minority language took a positive attitude toward their language? Could it perhaps change their destiny? Would it be possible to prevent a tragedy?
A Little about the Case of El Salvador
Salvadoran Nawat is currently the southernmost of the Nahua languages and the only one spoken outside of Mexican territory (excluding migrant/diaspora communities). It is spoken by a dwindling, scattered population in the central and western areas of this small Central American country. With the loss of Nawat, El Salvador would become the first monolingual country in its region, as the shift to Spanish would be complete.
Ever since the first Spanish colonization in 1524 the Nawat language has not enjoyed high status, even after the establishment of the national state in 1821. The Salvadoran Nahuas became dominated and minoritized, and their language has been weakening ever since. The already undermined language was dealt a severe blow by a major event in 1932: a peasant uprising by and in the area of Nahua villages resulted in an excessive response from the state, with the genocide of some 25,000 people (approximately 2 percent of the country’s population at that time). The political dispute soon turned into an ethnic issue. The nucleus of speakers disintegrated and speaking the language could signify mortal danger for a person, whether or not they had any political involvement. The event, therefore, had serious repercussions for the health of the language.
Nawat speakers fell into a kind of hopelessness where they identified themselves as the least desirable component of Salvadoran society, along with all their traditional knowledge, including the heritage language. In order to survive many of them changed their native surnames, they moved away from their traditional areas, they changed their clothes, and finally they abandoned the use of their language (most of them completely). With the loss of positive attitudes toward themselves, intergenerational transmission of the language was also lost. It was not until eighty years later that the Nawat language would be able to experience more promising times.
Auschwitz, Nawat, and a Solution
It would be possible to consider situations of this type just from a social, historical, or political point of view. However, these events and their consequences also have psychological significance. Their impact can make a person vulnerable, provoking depression or anxiety. As a clinical condition, this problem deserves treatment, which are discussed below.
Although it was developed for individual experiences, the logotherapy approach to psychotherapy, pioneered by Viktor Frankl, lends itself to both individual and/ or group contexts, such as the case of Nawat. Frankl’s approach was developed from his experiences in the face of the most extreme hardship in the genocide in Auschwitz in World War II. Threats, death, and despair were common experiences shared by both groups, despite them being quite different in both time and location.
The Logotherapy approach proposes that even when we face extreme adversity, we still have a degree of freedom in decision-making that can determine the course of individual responsibility that each person has for their own well-being. The core of Frankl’s philosophy is that people can find meaning in their lives by identifying the unique roles that only they can fulfil. Logotherapy believes that lack of meaning causes mental health issues, so it attempts to help people find meaning in order to help solve their problems. Thus, in a particular scenario people could resolve either to abandon themselves, or to find their own meaning in the situation and obtain a more satisfactory outcome, at the same time as understanding their own actions as well as the benefits in the short and long terms. This point can usefully be shared among people participating in language revitalization.
As is usual during times of adversity, people can feel forced to focus on threats and stress suffered instead of using that same time, passion, and energy to find other possibilities. We are less likely to achieve a success story if we only look at complaints and not at solutions. This does not mean we should ignore problems, of course not. The causes of a problem must be known if we want to make the best decisions, but we may be surprised at all the resources that we lose when focusing on a problem, when we could instead begin to believe in joint efforts and in our very own organizational capacities to create a magnificent story.
The inspirational option to focus on solutions and on aspects that we can influence/modify, is the key to building answers. Problems are only our starting point and nothing more than that. This was what Viktor Frankl promoted among the survivors of Oświęcim (Auschwitz), but it is a lesson that traveled to El Salvador and to the world.
Attitude as a Basic Resource
Even if our language only has a small number of speakers, whatever the situation has been, we must look for strengths to make a difference. In this circumstance attitudes are highly relevant because of a very practical fact: talking about attitudes means talking about more possibilities. It is possible that in project planning, the attitude factor has not been taken into account as one of our resources. Nevertheless, it deserves attention beyond a superficial look. Positive attitudes provide resources, but if there are negative attitudes, resources could get lost.
Circumstances can be explained as the interaction of two types of events: external ones, outside our control; and internal ones, which we can control. The way in which we focus on the internal variables has emotional and behavioral consequences. This is one of the approaches proposed by emotive rational therapy. If we do not address circumstances successfully, we can become pessimistic, but on the other hand, we can start from the same experience with the positive option of going forward with optimism and enthusiasm if we focus in the right way.
Why is it important to notice this? Because minority languages are not in that condition by mere chance, but due to political, social, or economic adversity. Those of us who are interested in them must be aware of the need for an approach that gives us the greatest possibility of resolving the situation in a positive way. Understanding this and teaching it to other participants and stakeholders in the process will be beneficial.
A simple way to achieve this is using the easy initials ABCDE:
A means ‘action’ (our current situation).
B comes from ‘behavior’ (we must provide at least two behaviors after the action).
C means ‘consequences’ (one for each behavior).
D is for ‘discussion’ of each consequence.
E means ‘efficacy’, where we decide on the best answer after the discussion.
How can this be applied to a specific case of linguistic revitalization? To get an idea we can look at these two simple examples:
Case 1
Action: My local language is in a critical situation.
Behavior: I will not do anything for my local language because languages are being lost on the planet every fifteen days. It would be better if we promote more successful languages.
Consequences: Defeatism and loss of cultural knowledge.
Case 2
Action: My local language is in a critical situation.
Behavior: My language expresses very beautiful forms, caring for my language is good for my culture and for humankind. Achievements are more appreciated when we face adversity.
Consequences: Appreciation and enthusiasm.
Discussion: A positive approach leads to more productive ways of facing reality and opens the door to more possibilities to solve this particular situation.
Efficacy: If we want to revitalize a language, we choose the route presented in case 2.
In the case of Nawat, taking control of their situation has enabled community members to elaborate thoughts such as:
‘Firm hearts cannot be defeated. From our hearts we will continue speaking Nawat’
‘They gave us death but we will give flowers and new life to words,’ or the very popular
Ne nawat shuchikisa (‘The Nawat language is in bloom’).
Why is it important to consider attitudes in this way? Because it can make a big difference and really does not cost a penny. It does not cost anything to meet and get organized with people who are interested in the language, create joint efforts, and solve conflicts together. This reasoning allows us to see attitude as an immaterial resource that helps us manage or optimize material ones.
Help from the Outside to Help Inside
Although it might sound a bit paradoxical, this approach is effective and offers one of the fundamental ways to change attitudes of native speakers. Strategies are needed to counteract and compensate for discrimination, for reasons such as ethics, responsibility, dignity, or mental health of persons who have been discriminated against for a long time because of their language, ethnicity, and/or culture. It is important that people in the language revitalization team care about this point, not to play the role of a messiah, but as human beings sharing their experiences and feelings with the human being that is next to them.
In a recent educational project in El Salvador that involved the state, an educational institution, language activists, and some native population members, it was a Nawat speaker, Andrea López, who in personal communication said, ‘Your team is looking after everything in school, you also take us and bring us safely and the classes are funny so we want to participate too because is evident the interest and good treatment you give to the Nawat language and its speakers’. She pointed out in this way that the effects of the position explained above have an emotional resonance that is translated into attitudes. If we add joy and enthusiasm, the combination becomes unbeatable as soon as we want to revitalize a language.
Some Ways of Changing Attitudes
For the past five years El Salvador has witnessed a growth in linguistic activism by citizen groups, which have recently been joined by various interested universities to create spaces and offer Nawat language classes. Despite the historical damage to the Nahua population, the involvement of native speakers stands out. Despite the advanced age of several of them, they are involved in the process of fostering language visibility, which has facilitated the presence and appreciation of these speakers inside and outside their towns. With the improvement in attitudes they have become figures in the changes they wanted to see.
It is also worth mentioning the celebrations around the language that are held today, such as the annual Day of the Mother Tongue, which is celebrated simultaneously in several places. These events require open spaces and the use of sound equipment because participants are numerous, whereas previously Nawat was only spoken sporadically in just a few homes.
Nawat is experiencing an initial process of revitalization which, the experts will agree, has not yet achieved much, but it gives enough encouragement to continue. In the words of Alan R. King, in the Oxford Handbook of Endangered Languages: ‘An awakening has begun, as intellectually capable and socially aware young adults start asking questions and discovering their capacity for effective action and exercising choices’. Collaboration between new speakers and native speakers is an outstanding achievement that has had mutual benefits for the attitude of both groups.
Conclusions
The issue of people’s attitudes toward a language is closely related to emotional factors. This makes it worthy of attention from a psychological point of view, particularly in those situations where the environment has been a determining factor in mental health, because substantial changes can have a powerful healing effect. Humans have the great ability to influence their destiny, even in the face of adversity, and to develop positive attitudes in different ways such as when taking on a commitment in a language revitalization process where attitudes are an authentic resource that must be adopted by the revitalizing community, even if they do not have material resources to start the task of preventing the tragedy of the loss of a language. The valorization of the language and ethical treatment of the speaker community by external figures can contribute to mobilizing the appreciation of speakers for their own language, and thus change their attitude to it. By doing so they can make more widespread use of their language.
The number of Nawat language speakers is still small today, but it is precisely this that gives it an interesting position. If this process runs successfully, it can become a regional model in Central America about how to go forward with the resource of attitudes, enabling us to win when history once said we should lose.
8.1 Empowerment and Motivation in the Revitalization of Wymysiöeryś
When I started my activities in revitalizing Wymysiöeryś, many Vilamovians in their fifties, who were too young to have learned Wymysiöeryś but old enough to remember people speaking it, told me a number of stories. They were about people who could not speak good Polish or had a Wymysiöeryś accent in Polish; about the last woman who used Vilamovian folk dress as everyday wear to her death in 2002 – Baranła-Anielka; about a man whose surname was changed from Schneider to Sznajder (to make it more Polish) and then how after many years he changed it back to Schneider. Another story was about a woman, Küba-Hȧla, who was expelled from her own house in connection with postwar persecutions of Vilamovians. After having spent a couple of years in a labor camp where she was sent because she had been reported by a Pole who had taken over her house, she never took up Polish citizenship and died in penury as a stateless person. All those people (who were fluent only in Wymysiöeryś) were portrayed as stupid, backward, underprivileged, or stubborn. The people who told me these stories thought that I would make fun of the people described in those stories. But for me those people were a symbol of commitment to Wymysoü, similar to my own, despite living in other times and under other conditions. And unlike the Polish national heroes who I was taught about at school, they were not committed to killing a person or to organizing an uprising, it was a commitment of their own life by continuing the Wymysiöeryś language and culture.
The older Vilamovians told me stories about Vilamovian professors, bishops, and merchants, who used to live in Cracow, Lviv, or Vienna, but spoke Wymysiöeryś when they came to visit Wymysoü. These stories revealed that Wymysiöeryś was a language of educated people as well. This made me realize how important changing local ideologies was so that others could also know Wymysiöeryś as the language of prestige, spoke by people of certain status. Several factors contributed to this change. In 2012, I received the European Union Contest for Young Scientists (EUCYS) prize in Poland for a text about Wymysoü. Later more and more activities were supported by Tomasz Wicherkiewicz from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and by Justyna Olko from the Faculty ‘Artes Liberales’ of University of Warsaw, as both of these external institutions became involved in the revitalization of Wymysiöeryś. Because of these developments the attitudes of the municipal government changed. Also theater plays (see Figure 8.1.1) and the fact that Wymysiöeryś was being taught at the University of Warsaw started to positively influence language ideologies in the society: not only in Wymysoü, but in the whole of Poland. The same holds true for the acknowledgment of our language by SIL in 2007 and UNESCO in 2009.
Figure 8.1.1 Performance in Wymysiöeryś, Der Hobbit, Polish Theatre in Warsaw.
For me a big motivating factor for continuing to work on revitalization is when I can show other people how we conduct our revitalization activities as well as experience what they do in their communities. I had an opportunity to do it for example in Mexico during a summer school of the EngHum project. Another important factor is the texts about Wymysiöeryś. Tomasz Wicherkiewicz wrote in 2001 that Wymysiöeryś will be extinct by 2010. Then, in 2011, I wrote an email to him saying that our language was still alive. After that, he came to Wymysoü and engaged himself in the revitalization process.
But the most motivating three moments of my life happened when I heard the following three statements by three Vilamovian women: first: ‘I want to invite you to my 90th birthday party, because I want to have somebody there to speak Wymysiöeryś to’; second: ‘If they expel you from your house as I was expelled for speaking Wymysiöeryś in 1945, come to me, I have chickens, they lay eggs, you will not starve in my house’; third: ‘When I see these children wearing Vilamovian folk dress and speaking Wymysiöeryś, I think that they are my parents and my grandparents, and aunts, and uncles. They have been dead for such a long time, and here I can see their clothes waving and hear their voices speaking’.
8.2 Language Activism
Engagement on behalf of languages, frequently called language activism, can be understood as intentional, often vigorous or energetic actions that individuals and groups undertake to bring about a desired goal, such as political, social, or cultural change. Activists are highly committed people who engage in activities on behalf of their communities, develop different kinds of strategies for the future of their communities and languages, and focus a collective spotlight onto particular issues. Sometimes they are able to motivate other people into action and change indifferent or hostile people’s language attitudes. Language activism embraces a range of endeavors, approaches, protest slogans, demonstrations, advocacy, and information dissemination, which aim to change a current state of affairs, and which may also raise people’s consciousness. The scope and levels of actions undertaken on behalf of a specific language depend on the situation of the language, the degree of recognition or protection offered by the state, and the attitudes of minority community members toward it, as well as the attitudes of the dominant society.
Language activists attempt to encourage native and potential speakers of a language to use it. They try to persuade governments and policy makers to support their goals. They do not possess authority or decisive power; therefore, they need to rely on people with whom they cooperate. When the minority community and its language lack recognition, their only promoters and policy makers are language activists.
There are different forms of language activism depending on the time and context as well as the aim of activities: to change one’s own language practices or influence the behavior of others. Actions in favor of a minority language do not have to be spectacular. There are situations where progressive assimilation poses the most significant threat to minority languages, when language ideologies encourage an opinion that minority languages are regarded as an inferior form of communication, and when current and potential users of the language remain indifferent. If this is the case, activism may start with individual language choices such as learning an endangered language, using it even when it seems not to be accepted by the dominant society (or even the minority one), speaking it with children, and showing pride in using it and in being identified as a member of the language community. Such an attitude may positively influence other people’s language attitudes and practices. This type of activism may be aimed at protecting the traditional life of the community, or more concerned with global issues such as social justice, the environment, fair trade, and human rights.
Minority language activism may take the form of organizing and participating in cultural, social, and public events related to the minority language and culture. Not only does this help to strengthen the community, creating new possibilities to use the language and identify strongly with other community members; it also empowers people to move to a more public level of activism in the struggle for language rights. Examples might include actions to show the movement’s strength, such as demonstrations, which gather many individuals as well as groups, communities, and associations supporting language and culture. They could also include language festivals to raise awareness in a less confrontational way.
An alternative form of language activism can be expressed through actions with political background. This often involves only a small, strongly engaged subgroup of the minority language community, because it demands considerable commitment and a higher awareness of the importance of fighting for language rights and the need to take responsibility for others. It might involve civil disobedience, for example, defacing public property such as signposts to draw people’s attention to the absence of the minority language in public space; or refusing to answer tax bills or court officials in the majority language. Cymdeithas Yr Iaith Gymraeg (the Welsh Language Society) provides an already classic example of such activities dating from the beginning of the 1960s. By their direct, often illegal activities and campaigns, this pressure group contributed to establishing the Welsh language as the coofficial language of Wales. These actions are more focused on securing language rights than increasing the use of the minority language.
The role of language activism is significant on many levels. It encourages other people to use a language and gives them the opportunity to engage in the cultural and language life of a community. On a more public level, language activism counteracts the lack of minority language recognition and can influence state language policy to be more favorable toward endangered languages.
8.3 ‘I’m Revitalizing Myself!’
I am not Māori, but for forty years I have been participating in and observing the revitalization of the Māori language, which started in earnest in 1982 with the formation of kōhanga reo (preschool language immersion centers). I learnt Māori and raised my children bilingually; they went to Māori immersion preschool and schooling options until they were high school age, and I have been teaching Māori in schools and tertiary institutions since the 1980s. With this wealth of experience I can remember feeling encouraged in what I was doing because I felt I was part of a larger movement of people who were revitalizing the Māori language.
However, in the late 1990s, when I mentioned how I felt to a colleague and noted Māori academic, Dr. Te Rita Papesch, she told me that she didn’t feel like she was part of any ‘movement’! This stopped me in my tracks and made me think. So when I was interviewing Māori adults for various research projects I started asking them about why they wanted to be able to speak Māori. Te Rita was right – hardly any of them mentioned that it was because they wanted to revitalize the language.
Instead these ‘new speakers’ of Māori talked about how the Māori language was important for their identity as Māori – ‘I am Māori, so I want to speak Māori’. Often they talked about wanting to be able to participate in and understand Māori rituals at hui (meetings, gatherings). Those I talked to also described how the Māori language was important for their spiritual well-being. In other words, personal identity needs were their main motivator. And boy, were they motivated! Many of those I spoke to have gone on to become noted speakers and change agents. Such people are catalysts, inspiring Māori by challenging the dominant discourse. This makes sense, since one of the earliest language revitalization academics, Joshua Fishman, says that language revitalization will often involve identity (re)formation.
Apart from a focus on personal identity needs, most of those I spoke to were parents, and they mentioned the importance of ensuring that their children were speakers of Māori. In other words, they recognized their key role in establishing and maintaining intergenerational transmission of the language. I remember how one person, when asked to write down their three main motivating factors, wrote the names of their three children. Others also mentioned how they felt that the revitalization of Māori was important to the survival of their hapū (subtribe) and iwi (tribe).
The people I talked to did sometimes mention that they were motivated by the need to revitalize the Māori language, but this was in third place after their identity needs and desire to support others ‒ in particular, their children.
In the 2000s, I noticed that national and tribal language planners in New Zealand were using promotional material to encourage people to both learn the language and also speak it as much as possible. These materials used phrases such as ‘every generation has a role to play in saving our language’. In other words, they were making the same mistake I did, by assuming my motivations for being involved in the revitalization of Māori were the same as those of others. I thought that the promotional material might have resonated more with potential speakers if it emphasized the positive associations of the language with personal identity and well-being.
The message here is that you should never assume that your motivations in language revitalization are the same as others’ – in fact, if you’re reading this book you are quite likely focused on revitalizing a language. So don’t forget that identity needs and a sense of belonging are highly motivational and that for many they aren’t revitalizing a language as much as they are revitalizing themselves.
8.4 ‘It’s Good for Your Heart’: Three Motivational Steps for Language Revitalization
To be honest, in all these years I realized that there are very few reasons why people should keep an extremely endangered language alive. It is certainly fascinating as it brings a different worldview and allows you to reason differently. But concretely, when you live in a very poor region that does not offer any opportunities to young people, a region whose only mantra is ‘learn a (dominant!) language and leave’, what should your motivations be to actually pass a minority language on to your children or – for young people – to spend much time learning a useless endangered language (which is not easy to learn)?
The only words that come to my mind when I think about sharing my motivation are those of my dad: to platezzi greka kanni kalà stin kardìa ‘speaking Greko is good for the heart.’ Starting from this quote, I shall share here three main steps that I consider crucial when undertaking a very frustrating revitalization process (as phrased by Lenore Grenoble) in extremely endangered contexts with a handful of older speakers left, which can turn into a lot of fun (as claimed by John Sullivan) but only with very good motivations as foundations.
People start learning or revitalizing minority languages for several reasons: cultural heritage, curiosity/interest, research, and many others. I noticed, however, that the big difference comes when they feel connected to the language, when they realize that speaking this language makes them feel better to the extent that they decide not just to study or occasionally speak the language but to live the language, that is to embrace the world this language describes and at the same time allow it to move forward into new ones by constantly speaking it and fighting for it. This change usually occurs when people start spending much time with older speakers (even without understating a word initially). When this happens, they deeply connect with the language and crucially with the speakers. In that moment new potential revitalizers realize the treasure of the words stored in people’s mouths and feel that the responsibility of transmission has moved from the old speaker down to them, to their kardìa – heart. This relation between the speakers and the potential revitalizers (who might be speakers themselves) adds a strong emotional value to language, which is no longer a language, but the language that people use to speak with or to listen to the people they love. This strong emotional value is the first step toward language revitalization.
The second crucial step is to build a team. It is difficult for revitalizers (either native or new speakers) to go against the flow and keep speaking the language when the rest of the community has stopped using it on a daily basis. In particular, once the initial enthusiasm fades away, revitalizers too can begin to forget the reasons for their work. By contrast, having a team of at least two or more people is a big motivation to move forward; it allows you to always be more creative and it incentivizes new actions when frustration takes over.
The third step is very much linked to the potential outcomes that speaking a minority language can bring with it. In most cases, when we tackle critically endangered languages, the economy – for instance – is a major factor to take into consideration, as its lack of economic value and the fact that ‘it does not give you a job’ is usually among the root causes for its abandonment. Therefore, it is important to foresee social and economic outcomes that can result from speaking the language and that can lead to concrete improvements for the community.
These three steps are a summary of what I (un)consciously promoted in Calabria, with my community. Regardless of any ‘more objective’ motivation, I must however go back to the title of this text and admit that the driving force for each of my actions has always been a profound love for my language and for the people who speak it.
8.5 Monolingual Space
We founded the Instituto de docencia e investigación etnológica de Zacatecas (IDIEZ) in 2002 to provide scholarships to native speakers of Nahuatl who were studying careers in Spanish at the Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas, and to furnish them with a place to continue practicing their language and culture. At first we held most of our collective discussions in Spanish. But as my command of spoken Nahuatl grew, I realized that my students were more than capable of discussing, in their own language, any of the academic topics that came up in our sessions. At that point I understood that every minute I spent working with them in Spanish was time contributing to the destruction of their native language. We decided that IDIEZ, from then on, would be a monolingual academic space. I played the role of ‘language police’ for a while, reminding them, when they would switch to Spanish, to look for the appropriate Nahuatl word or to paraphrase.
It’s important to clarify here that we are not purists: our aim has never been to return to the time before the conquest, when Nahuatl was free of European loanwords and before the changes to pronunciation, meaning, and how words are formed and ordered that have come about as a result of contact with Spanish – as if that were even possible. The purpose of our monolingual space is akin to that of a jump start for a depleted battery. Our students have, in their brains, all of the cognitive and linguistic tools for thinking critically and creatively from the unique perspective of their language and culture, a perspective that benefits not only their community but all of humanity. They have fallen out of practice and they need to discover for themselves the richness, complexity, and power of their language: The monolingual space is the instrument for achieving this.
Students arrive at IDIEZ as native speakers who have gone through twelve years of formal education in Spanish, and have heard time after time from school, the government, and the media that their language and culture is worthless. So they no longer use Nahuatl except when they return to their villages for short family visits. When they begin to participate in the monolingual space, many ask themselves if they will be punished for speaking Spanish, as some of their former teachers punished them (with beatings, verbal abuse and humiliation, fines, extra chores, etc.) for speaking Nahuatl.
The transition is not easy: as they begin to work monolingually, many students report experiencing headaches. But at some point, each one of them realizes that their language is a powerful, complex instrument for reasoning. At that moment, a light comes on in their eyes – a light of curiosity, self-esteem, and empowerment. And then, through direct participation in monolingual teaching, research, and revitalization activities at IDIEZ, they learn that their opinions matter and their ideas are valuable; they learn that they can develop curriculum and conduct research on their own, without relying on the formulas and recipes they have been taught during their formal education. In other words, they think for themselves and express what they think, in their own language.
One of the most frequent statements one can hear in communities experiencing shift to a dominant language is that the local language does not have any value in the modern world. One of the speakers of Nahuatl whom I met during our language revitalization activitiesFootnote 1 recounted that he could not learn the heritage language from his parents because they would tell him that it is not useful anymore:
Neh oniczaloh nin tlahtol ihcuac nicpiyaya mahtlac huan ce xihuitl huan oniczaloh inahuac nocihtzin. Notahtzin huan nonantzin amo nechittitihqueh tlica yehhuan oquihtoayah ‘yocmo, yocmo sirve, nin tlahtol yocmo sirve.’
I learned this language when I was 11 years old. And I learned it from my grandmother. My father and my mother did not teach me because they were saying it is not useful anymore. This language is not useful anymore.
A somewhat similar statement comes from the writings of Florian Biesik, the famous poet from Wilamowice and the author of Uf jer wełt, the Wymysiöeryś version of the Divine comedy:
I know different world languages, I have lived for half the century in exile, but the dearest to me remain the Polish and Wilamowicean tongues, although with neither of them did I earn even a piece of bread.
The lack of economic usefulness of his native language did not stop Biesik from writing in Wymysiöeryś and creating a literary masterpiece. Moreover, he did it while living far away from his community with a profitable occupation as a railway official in Trieste, Italy. Clearly, for Biesik the importance and utility of the language was not affected by its perceived low economic value abroad. However, the vitality of Wymysiöeryś in the community at that time was high, and it was spoken and transmitted to children. The situation changed after World War II not because of a lack of usefulness, but because of a language ban and the persecution of its speakers. Today things are different: the lack of economic value is one of the most salient arguments that the revitalizers of Wymysiöeryś have to face, even though there are other essential benefits and assets that the local language can offer the community. And numerous groups, in different geographic and cultural contexts, share this situation.
Therefore, when you engage in language revitalization you have to be prepared to face many strong counterarguments, coming both from communities themselves and from potential founders or sponsors. Unlike linguists and other academics, who usually have a stable economic situation, members of minority communities often lack job opportunities, and face highly insecure and harsh material conditions as well as a lack of prospects. For some communities at least, an important goal is not to maintain their language, which has been the source of stigmatization, shame, discrimination, and disadvantage, but to secure better living conditions. How to respond to such arguments and encourage local communities to engage in language revitalization? Furthermore, funding institutions, politicians, and state agendas – despite superficial declarations recognizing the value of linguistic-cultural diversity and minority rights – are rather unlikely to offer serious commitment to language revitalization based on arguments of the beauty of diversity, human rights, social justice, or even cognitive benefits.
The market value of learning major, dominant, and/or international languages is widely appreciated and promoted in educational and language policies. The economic value of languages is usually linked to their role as assets on the job market or as a source of added value to products or services, for instance, where languages can provide links to specific places, experiences, or a feeling of authenticity. However, the perceived and recognized economic value almost never, or rarely, extends to minority or immigrant languages and nonstandard language varieties. Economic benefits and commercialization are an often neglected dimension of language revitalization programs, despite being of key importance: many languages cease to be spoken precisely because of their perceived lack of utility and economic value.
It does not have to be this way, as the use of minority or local languages in business can lead to brand differentiation and more personalized, localized, and thus competitive offers, which increase the customer experience. The recognition of these benefits, in the eyes of both speakers and local entrepreneurs, is crucial for successful revitalization efforts. Responding to this need, minority language advocacy in a number of European countries has promoted the use of local languages in businesses, enterprises, and public services. Relatively recent efforts to embrace both grassroots and governmental initiatives have been used to promote Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Irish, and Basque/Euskara. This can start on a microscale within selected local businesses and services. Similar policies may even be adopted by larger companies. For example, the Irish railway companies Iarnród Éireann and Luas and the national airline carrier, Aer Lingus, have incorporated some announcements in Irish. However, the airline employees use just a few words in Irish and this has a decorative function rather than a communicative role, because the safety demonstration is never given in Irish.Footnote 3 Passengers also complain about the mistakes made in the greetings and the lack of language skills of the crew. While such steps increase language visibility, they do not necessarily have a real impact on using the language and showing its utility. In this respect, local and grassroots initiatives are of key importance. Among possible strategies is the creation of local spaces, activities, and products that are closely linked to the heritage tongue, but have some economic potential. A quite different, but equally important, option is to promote multilingual workspaces. These have the potential to generate new solutions and ideas because of the creative capacity of their multiethnic members. Opportunities will of course differ from place to place. In this chapter, I discuss some possible general paths, as well as specific (but by no means exhaustive) examples, of generating economic benefits for communities based on their local linguistic and cultural heritage. A closely related challenge is that of marketing and promoting language revitalization, with regard to both community members and external actors or institutions.
Use of Traditional Knowledge for Subsistence and Environmental Strategies
An important path for generating economic benefits involves promoting the role of traditional knowledge and local languages in shaping sustainable relationships with the natural environment. It seems that biological and linguistic diversities are sometimes threatened by the same factors, such as urbanization and industrialization. Likewise, the high numbers of endangered species in these areas correlate with high levels of linguistic diversity. Some of the most evident examples of such zones are New Guinea, the Amazon rainforest, the Congo basin forests, and the North American deserts. As shrinkage of the natural landscape leads to the endangerment of certain plants and animals, it also makes it difficult for Indigenous minorities to practice their traditional ways of life and, consequently, their languages. And traditional Indigenous models of managing natural resources are known to indirectly support biological diversity and balanced economic activities. However, because of policies of cultural and linguistic assimilation, Indigenous communities sometimes lose their knowledge of the environment and thus their ability to interact with it.
Such losses can be disastrous for whole ways of life, like abandoning agriculture as the subsistence base of existence or losing access to certain kinds of animals and plants (because of their extinction or due to forced resettlements, as was the case of Indigenous people in the USA, who were moved to reservations). Often, as in the case of the Nahuas in Tlaxcala, Mexico, losing the language and accepting national culture is accompanied by a switch to wage labor, usually outside the home community. At the same time, members of Nahua communities explain that increased levels of diabetes and obesity are caused by the introduction of artificial fertilizers and nontraditional foods. And the access to modern medical services does not seem to recompense the diminishing role of traditional healing. As the oldest speakers say, many of the beneficial plants that had been accessible before ceased to grow in the community, while knowledge about them that had been conveyed in the heritage language waned too. Such changes – and many others – have severe consequences, not only for local communities, but also for entire regions and so should be of interest for policy makers at regional and state levels. Therefore, language revitalization can be seen as an efficient strategy for maintaining, promoting, and exploiting local knowledge and managing the environment. Local language may become an essential ‘brick’ in a wider development strategy. A part of this should include its recognition as an important asset for both local sustainability and its attractiveness for visitors and entrepreneurs. All of these assets and arguments can be used by revitalizers to deal with institutions, politicians, entrepreneurs, and the communities where they work.
But what can be done in practice? It is widely documented that local languages are valuable reservoirs of environmental and practical knowledge. They are often keys to ethnobotany and ethnozoology, as well as very practical applications of local knowledge. It may refer, for example, to the use of herbs and medicinal plants, balanced management of crops and edible plants, or wise usage of animal resources with regard to their reproductive cycles. This kind of knowledge, ordered, classified, and expressed in local languages and combined with traditional practices, is often essential for maintaining sustainable relations with flora and fauna. On the other hand, cultural practices related to the environment include the ways in which natural resources are extracted and used. The study of this can be an essential part of language documentation and language revitalization projects, be they driven by the community or in partnership with external actors. This knowledge, in turn, can be recovered and reintroduced into the community, taking into account new contexts and dynamic environmental, social and economic conditions. Its potential in fact reaches beyond one particular place and should become an important element of marketing language revitalization outside the community. Specific strategies can embrace a very broad range of activities, approaches, and economic goals, depending on the environmental and cultural context. This may include balanced approaches to agriculture and ecological crop production, fishing, herding, pasturing, harvesting, gathering, raising livestock, and combining traditional subsistence modes with small-scale production (textiles, ceramics, wood products, etc.).
A good example of such an approach is provided by the linguistic-cultural revitalization programs run by the Sámi people in Norway and Finland, for example in Kautokeino. Language instruction and academic research there are closely linked to local food production and conservation, reindeer herding, fishing, and traditional medicine. In 2005 the Norwegian Government established the International Centre for Reindeer Husbandry in Kautokeino. It aims to maintain and develop sustainable reindeer husbandry in the north, to foster cooperation between the reindeer herding peoples, and to document and apply their traditional knowledge. In 2016 a calendar called ‘Boazojahki’, written entirely in the Sámi language, was created and launched by Karen Marie Eira Buljo. Aimed primarily at children and youth, it detailed the calendar year in terms of what it means for reindeer, reindeer herders, and the activities prescribed for each specific time of the year. Each month unveiled rich insights into the cyclical world of reindeer husbandry based on the natural environment. Importantly, theoretical and practical aspects of food production, reindeer herding, and traditional environmental strategies are an important focus of classes and seminars in Sámi Allaskuvla, or the Sámi University of Applied Sciences. Students learn the heritage language through active participation in traditional activities, such as fishing or preparing food. They also learn about subsistence strategies and the food production modes of traditional cultures in other parts of the world. This example may serve as inspiration for developing educational programs aimed at a deeper understanding of the role of the local environment (see Capsule 15.6). Ideally, as in the Sámi case, programmes should combine learning of the ancestral language with environmental studies and practical knowledge.
A useful framework for this kind of approach toward language, environment, and economic strategies is that of social economy, which addresses consumer behaviors and needs in the context of social justice, ethics, and other humanitarian values. Initiatives in social economy are run by cooperatives, NGOs (associations, foundations), social enterprises, and institutions. These groups often focus their efforts on the ideas of solidarity and responsibility, fostering socially inclusive wealth and well-being, or developing new solutions for social or environmental challenges. An important principle is that of not-for-profit aims; gains and resources are reinvested for the benefit of disadvantaged groups or communities. Such an approach contributes to a more sustainable and inclusive society. It also perfectly fits the situation of marginalized communities struggling to preserve their languages. Thus, a possible strategy to link the improvement of environmental and/or subsistence issues with language maintenance or revitalization is through community-based cooperatives and/or associations, as well as external NGOs or institutions interested in developing partnership with local community members and activists.
Linguistic, Cultural, and Educational Tourism
The economic potential of linguistic-cultural heritage can be specifically oriented toward tourism. Recent processes of globalization and homogenization have created a demand for unique and original products and services. Many people are no longer interested in highly commoditized and standardized forms of experience and mass tourism. Rather, they seek uniqueness and authenticity, experiencing the history, culture, and natural environment of less explored places and their inhabitants. Research on tourism in Europe reveals that ‘cultural visitors’ usually have a higher level of education and professional status. Many of them look for ‘authentic’ cultural traditions and ways of life, which they wish to experience themselves. Such preferences are, for example, addressed through the creation of ‘cultural villages’ in South Africa.Footnote 4 Located in different environments and in the territories of ethnic groups, such ‘villages’ offer unique opportunities for experiencing their lifestyles, including cultural and religious activities, crafts, and food – and also for hearing different local languages. For example, DumaZulu Lodge & Traditional Village (Hluhluwe) is advertised as ‘A unique cross-cultural experience in the authentic Zulu Village and Hotel. Traditional Zulu customs, tribal dancing, tales of ancient lore.’ Lesedi cultural village lures visitors with an ‘amazing multicultural dance show. As the sun sets over the African bush, you’re escorted to the Boma for a very interactive affair of traditional singing and dancing, which depict stories dating back to the days of their ancestors’. Of course, visitors are offered comfortable lodging and exquisite restaurants that only remotely resemble traditional life, if at all. And local languages are usually presented as an exotic extra on ‘polished’ tourist products and services. However, this basic idea can be adapted for a community-driven or community-managed (and more economically accessible!) touristic experience, where local ways and languages are not reduced to merely decorative functions. And if the communities can be in charge of this ‘offer’ and play a decisive role in developing services, then the income generated can support language revitalization activities and the general well-being of inhabitants.Footnote 5
The concept behind this type of tourism has been called the experience economy. It focuses not on offering commodities and commoditized services, but on different forms of experience, often based on ‘memorable’ events. When thinking about language revitalization and the commercialization of linguistic heritage, the experience economy can be seen as a particularly useful concept for tourism, cultural and artistic activities, or even the linguistic-cultural landscape. Products offered in the market can range from being entirely standardized and undifferentiated to being highly differentiated ‘special’ goods or services. Those related to a unique endangered heritage will definitely be at the latter end of this continuum. And because there is high interest among consumers in having ‘unique’ experiences, more and more businesses take this demand into account. Emotional responses, experiences of authenticity and uniqueness, exposure to local stories and local knowledge – all this can be brought into play when thinking about commercializing endangered linguistic and cultural heritage. Being exposed to and, ultimately, learning an endangered language is an important aspect of the experience economy. No wonder, heritage marketing has become a growing branch of the tourism industry where local and lesser-known languages are employed. However, this is often done rather superficially at the level of limited (and usually bilingual) ‘labeling’, which is an easy way of providing nostalgic or authenticity-seeking tourists with experiences of ‘traditional culture’.
The real challenge – and opportunity – is to link those experiences to genuine language revitalization and promotion efforts, without reducing them to purely symbolic or folkloric dimensions. Folklorization or ‘self-folklorization’, the marketing of one's culture to outsiders, is characterized by some as ‘identity for sale’, the result of prolonged symbolic violence and colonization that reduces cultural differences to the level of esthetics, but replicates social inequalities and divisions.Footnote 6 However, it can also be understood as a strategy against social degradation and cultural annihilation. Hylton White, who did extensive anthropological research in the Republic of South Africa, relates the case of one of the groups of Bushmen, who lived in urban slums but earned their living performing the traditional skills and cultural activities of nomads in a setting arranged for tourists. Of course, this can be interpreted as gain-motivated performance designed to meet the expectations of visitors and detached from the way of life of its actors. However, the words of the leader of this group, shared with the anthropologist, challenge this perspective: ‘I am an animal of nature. I want people to see me and know who I am. The only way our tradition and way of life can survive is to live in the memory of the people who see us’.Footnote 7
Keeping in mind tangible risks associated with the folklorization and commodification of local heritage, possible initiatives could focus on developing tourist enclaves distinguished by a unique language spoken in the area. Preserving a local tongue may be combined with creating both physical ‘living’ museums in the community, as well as virtual digital museums. What would distinguish such places over other local or regional museums would be the focus on an endangered language that could actually be heard in those spaces, with its speakers and their unique histories, local knowledge, and traditions expressed in the heritage tongue. Local knowledge – for example, environmental knowledge and sustainable management of natural resources – can also be useful for the present and future of visitors. Digital tools, such as interactive displays or games, will certainly be an important component of this kind of initiative, greatly enhancing the attractiveness of the language and its association with modern technology. Such places are also excellent venues for organizing regular workshops and artistic or educational activities linked to local heritage, both for the local community and for outsiders. The participation of visitors in these activities would generate an economic gain for local activists. Thus, such spaces could be used both to foster language learning and use, increase community engagement, generate funding by attracting tourists, stimulate positive language attitudes, and, finally, become an important venue for marketing language revitalization.
Of course, both the physical space and digital tools needed for these activities require substantial funding. When a community or municipality is unable to secure funds locally, they can look for them outside. Creating cultural infrastructures and digital tools is often supported by programs that are offered by regional, federal, or state agencies and institutions, or even private foundations. In the countries of the European Union it is possible to compete for funding within special programs available at both state and pan-European level. In some of them it is useful to have an academic partner to apply with: others, however, are only available for municipalities, cultural institutions, and NGOs (see Chapter 5). Initiatives linked to the creation of local language spaces are also likely to increase the sense of community and vitality of a given group, to promote local activism and language specialists, as well as to deepen the awareness of linguistic-cultural heritage in the region and beyond. Examples of linking local languages to tourism include Gaelic in Scotland and Ireland, Manx on the Isle of Man, Māori in New Zealand, or Welsh in the United Kingdom. However, it is difficult to estimate to what degree touristic interest in these languages has in fact increased their vitality and use. Nevertheless, they have received more visibility and at least some of the local communities have benefitted from tourism.
Figure 9.1 The performance and agency of Indigenous communities. The group of Zohuameh Citlalimeh, San Francisco Tetlanohcan, Mexico.
No doubt, showing the usefulness and value of an endangered language is an important outcome of these initiatives and can foster actual language use. One can also hope to mobilize the community and attract new speakers. An example of one such ongoing initiative comes from Wilamowice, a small town in southern Poland preserving a unique language, Wymysiöeryś, which has developed and been spoken since the thirteenth century (see Capsule 6.1). Persecution and the language ban of 1945 meant that Wymysiöeryś almost became extinct toward the end of the past century. However, it is now the focus of vigorous revitalization efforts. Alongside other components of the revitalization program, some of its most engaged participants and researchers, Bartłomiej Chromik, along with local activists Justyna Majerska-Sznajder and Tymoteusz Król, launched the project Creation of a tourist cluster in the Wilamowice Commune on the basis of Wymysiöeryś in 2015 (with the support of the Foundation for Polish Science).
This project was undertaken due to concerns that positive language attitudes and practices in Wilamowice may reverse when new users of Wymysiöeryś move out of the town after completing their education. With the aim of preventing or limiting this situation, project members designed a strategy for creating workplaces that would stimulate the usage of Wymysiöeryś through the development of tourism. The basic assumption was that the creation of a tourism cluster embracing the whole municipality (both Wilamowice and surrounding villages) would not only bring economic impact to language revitalization activities, but also help to create a more sustainable, long-term strategy for the community. Young Polish designers, ethnographers, and an IT specialist were invited to collaborate on this initiative. Together with local activists, they designed and created prototype souvenirs inspired by the culture of Wilamowice, as well as board and computer games and a system of plaques with tourist information.Footnote 8 These products are being sold at all events focusing on Wymysiöeryś and organized by the local NGO. They will also be available for sale in the future museum of local linguistic-cultural heritage. The concept of this museum was in fact developed during a collaborative international field school of the Engaged Humanities project of the University of Warsaw, SOAS, University of London, and Leiden University in 2016 held in Wilamowice. After the field school had finished local authorities decided to support the idea of a ‘living museum' that would serve both as the focus of the tourist cluster and as an artistic and educational space linked to the revitalization of Wymysiöeryś. The selected architectural design of the museum envisions a large space for the local amateur theater group performing in Wymysiöeryś and for educational workshops that will be offered for local and external participants.
Developing linguistic tourism can be enhanced by commercializing handicrafts and ethno-design products, especially when they can be explicitly linked to the local language. In Wilamowice these products embrace T-shirts, mugs, badges, and bags with word plays in Wymysiöeryś, a wide range of woven products (a traditional industry in the town) including items of clothing and accessories, and a language game (see Figure 9.2). On the Isle of Man, widely distributed products include T-shirts, home textiles, and coasters for cups and glasses with texts in Manx. All traditional communities have their own craftwork, be it ceramics, basketry, wood carvings, or textiles, and these can be linked to the heritage language in numerous ways, as can their distribution, marketing, and sale.
Figure 9.2 Local products sold during the Mother Tongue Day in Wilamowice.
Figure 9.3 A local store with some names and announcements in Nahuatl, San Miguel Tenango, Mexico.
The activities in Wilamowice also involved marking out tourist paths and preparing plaques in Wymysiöeryś, Polish, and English about spots of historical and present-day importance. These plaques provide rich information about the town and its heritage. In addition, they form important components of the local linguistic landscape and this has a strong positive impact, improving previously negative attitudes toward Wymysiöeryś, and giving more visibility to ongoing revitalization activities. The project also created a tourist guide that is available in Polish and English. It is downloadable from a special webpage focusing on tourism in Willamowice.Footnote 9 This website serves as a virtual substitute for the traditional tourist information point and it can encourage visitors to come to the town. To make city tours even more attractive, the team created and tested a quest game based on the topography of Wilamowice. It was developed together with local teenagers who learn the language and wanted to be involved in the development of tourism. The description of questing is available on the website, which also provides information about activities and workshops that can be of interest for both community members and visitors. In fact, scenarios of workshops focusing on the local language, traditions, and handicrafts (costume, weaving, dances, etc.) were also developed during the same project. Additionally, young new speakers of the language were trained to serve as guides in the town for tours based on linguistic-cultural heritage.
Taken together, these initiatives and activities are expected to create permanent jobs associated with language revitalization, as well as stable forms of social and community engagement. This includes language classes in the local school (initiated in 2013 as a result of collaborative efforts of local activists and engaged researchers from the University of Warsaw and Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań), the production of local souvenirs and ethno-design merchandize, a soon-to-be-opened living museum, the creation of a new infrastructure for touristic groups, as well as workshops and artistic activities with a strong potential for commercialization. Artistic activities include a local theater group operating under the patronage of the Polish Theatre in Warsaw, which also hosts special plays in Wymysiöeryś performed by Wilamovian youths. Such events (along with media campaigns launched in all our collaborative projects) are essential for the positive marketing of minority languages in Poland. They increase awareness of linguistic diversity in the country (despite postwar homogenization and dominant national ideology) and create more supportive attitudes within broader society.
The example of Wilamowice shows that such strategies have made a difference in one relatively small community. However, they can also be applied on a larger scale for languages with more speakers. For example, in Wales, and especially in its northern part, proficiency in Welsh is seen as a valuable asset in the labor market, especially in the domains of local and national governments, administration, education, tourism, and media. Creating work opportunities for Welsh speakers in their communities has shown the economic potential of the language and has contributed to its growth. The language is also seen as an opportunity for manufacturers and retailers, and is one of the driving forces for the economic growth in Wales. Also in the case of Irish, local organizations promote the value of incorporating the language visually into businesses, with product labels, signage, menus, or stationery. Here the Irish language is used as a resource for business, a domain that has, until now, been reserved for English. They also encourage nonfluent new speakers of Irish to engage in such initiatives. More fluent entrepreneurs and shopkeepers go beyond bilingual signage, as they create an Irish-language experience for their customers, encouraging them to develop their language skills and use.Footnote 10 An important impact of such initiatives is to link the minority language to practical day-to-day life, including economic and social activities.
Marketing and Promoting Language Revitalization
Both linguistic tourism and management of environment should become essential elements of marketing and promoting language revitalization. This, in turn, is essential for improving language attitudes, language use, and levels of activism or support both inside and outside a specific community. Marketing a minority language is needed to increase its social status and to encourage a higher level of commitment from native speakers, language learners, potential new speakers, as well as broader society. The awareness of this necessity is growing. Over two decades ago it was pointed out that although the New Zealand government had started to spend large sums of money on preschool language nests, immersion primary schools as well as other initiatives, its language policies were not accompanied by marketing a sufficiently positive image of the language. This lack of marketing hindered some of the investments in language revitalization, even though promoting the Māori language has been one of the major tasks of the Māori Language Commission, established in 1987. The target audience of Māori campaigns has become the wider population of New Zealand. Also marketing intergenerational transmission among Māori families and learners of the language has been seen as another key necessity.Footnote 11
Marketing language revitalization is also crucial for generating funding for revitalization activities. What kind of solid arguments can you give to skeptical community members, parents, or grandparents, who remember language discrimination and violence, or to policy makers, academics, and sponsors? Connecting language revitalization to local tourism and to sound environmental knowledge is not the only possible advantage: there are also other benefits with significant economic impact. As we learned in Chapter 1, multilingual individuals have increased intellectual potential, reflected in greater flexibility and capacity for task solving as well as higher social skills. This applies to children, adults, and the elderly – for the latter the usage of more than one language can hinder cognitive decline and possibly delay the onset of symptoms of dementia. Research also shows that language revitalization and the use of the mother tongue throughout the stages of an individual’s development are not only closely linked to improvements in self-esteem, but also to better health. Moreover, we know that a strong correlation exists between language loss and deterioration in Indigenous health (e.g. the presence of diabetes), with symptoms associated with posttraumatic stress, elevated suicide rates, and alcoholism.Footnote 12
Preserving the heritage language simply helps to prevent these problems and to deal with them if they are present. As numerous studies and testimonies have shown, speaking a heritage or ancestral language or going back to it in the process of ‘individual revitalization’ in connection to ancestral roots and ethnic identity, greatly improves psychological well-being. As psychological and medical studies have revealed it also allows us to deal better with stress, illness, and experienced trauma or discrimination.Footnote 13 Thus, if the negative forces of language loss are reversed, we can expect beneficial results: not only better health, but also better functioning in society and in the job market. And this, in turn, has impact for the cost of medical healthcare and the general economy. Indeed, language revitalizers could argue that a relatively modest investment in an endangered language (in the scale of a state’s expenditures!) can substantially lower the costs of healthcare and social services. And, as argued before, it can generate economic assets for marginalized, often poor communities, reducing the need for the state’s help. Put in economic jargon, language revitalization has the potential to contribute to a reduction in the direct and indirect costs of many diseases, improving the human capital (the knowledge, skills, and habits crucial for the ability to work and create economic value) of a given region.
Speakers of minority languages can also positively influence the labor market. We already know that multilingual individuals, including users of nondominant languages, are important assets for employers because they represent an investment in the diversity of the creative potential of a company. Individuals with high esteem who are proud of their ethnic origin will perform much better than those who are ashamed of their identity and no longer communicate in their heritage languages. The promotion of multilingualism may also help to reduce poor labor choices driven by racism and dominant linguistic ideologies. Persons with lower self-esteem are often underemployed in positions below their actual potential. This may also happen if employers are driven by prejudice based on the origin or ethnic affiliation of potential workers, so it is essential to raise their awareness about the benefits of multiethnic labor force. Thus, the efficient marketing of minority languages can bring economic benefits not only to their speakers, but also to other sectors or groups in wider society.
The positive image and recognition of a minority language can sometimes do more good for language use than concrete revitalization or teaching activities. And, conversely, the absence of positive marketing in prestigious spaces may effectively hinder the use of the language. To give an example of such a situation I will quote the words of one of the young speakers of Nahuatl in the Mexican state of Puebla:
Quemman, quemman polihuiz nahuatlahtolli naltepeuh, tleca tlacameh ihuan cihuameh amo quimatih ihuipan sirve para qué, para qué sirve, tleca, tlen ipatiuh. Nochtin tlacameh ihuan cihuameh amo tlahtoah ipan iyolloco centro, ipan Ayuntamiento […] Porque tleca personas amo tlahtoah nahuatlahtolli, entonces amo patiyoh. Amo patiyoh quimatih nahuatlahtolli.
Yes, yes Nahuatl will perish in my town because the men and the women do not know what it can be used for, what it can be used for, why, what is its value. All the men and the women, they don’t speak [Nahuatl] in the town center, in the municipality. Because those people do not speak Nahuatl, so it has no value. They know that Nahuatl has no value.
The absence of the language in municipal offices and local businesses is a powerful negative sign for speakers, signifying denial of the value and utility of the local language. However, even a small investment in visual recognition in the public sphere (‘linguistic landscape’) or the presence of the language in public services not only creates jobs for speakers and gives their language some prestige, but also conveys a message to the community that the language actually is useful. For this reason, some of the stores in Wilamowice and the local vicinity, as part of an initiative with local entrepreneurs, plan to adopt bilingual marking of their products. At the same time, our more recent step in Wilamowice, accomplished in collaboration with the local NGO and the municipal authorities, was to hang a huge banner on the municipal building located in the main square in the town. It announced to the inhabitants and visitors that S’Wymysiöeryśy śtejt uf, ‘Wymysiöeryś rises to its feet’.
Among the lessons I learned from my late grandfather, Miami Tribe of Oklahoma Chief waapimaankwa (White Loon, 1925–2008), is the importance of understanding relationships – among people, places, ideas, and institutions – and the associated community dynamics. He knew that in order for the Miami people to be successful, the efforts of our tribal government had to be aligned with the values and norms of our community, and he thus spent a lot of time talking to community members and asking about their perspectives. My grandfather’s wisdom combined traditional Miami tribal knowledge with Western education, along with years of experience in leading our tribal nation toward economic sustainability and reclamation of our culture and language, myaamia. He championed the revitalization of myaamia, which was erroneously labeled ‘extinct’ in the categories of Western science because it went out of use almost completely in the 1960s. As such, a foundational means of fostering relationships within our community – through our language – became compromised. However, myaamia was well documented in a large body of written records prior to its dormancy, and from these records the Miami community started learning myaamia so that we could build stronger relationships with each other, with our tribal lands, and with our ancestors. I did not have access to myaamia until I was a young adult in the 1990s, when revitalization efforts began, but I am proud that I now hear Miami children speaking it.
In this chapter, I offer a synthesis of key ideas that have emerged from the application of my grandfather’s wisdom to my language revitalization experiences within the Miami community and in other Indigenous communities, primarily smaller groups in the United States and Canada. I began this work in the late 1990s as a Miami tribal member and a (then nascent, now professional) linguist, and I write from this perspective. I offer this commentary with the caveat that lessons from my experiences will not apply to all communities that are engaged in language revitalization. Indeed, communities and language situations are diverse; each must be examined in its own context because revitalization is ultimately a local phenomenon, even though it occurs with global influences. Having said this, as also shown throughout the other chapters in this book, there are recurrent themes in language endangerment and the associated responses. The key theme for the current chapter is that language revitalization occurs among people who have relationships with each other and with their languages. It is important to focus on these relationships when planning, implementing, or assessing a revitalization effort.
I begin this discussion by clarifying my use of certain terms: power, power relations, and community dynamics. Often, particularly in discussions of politics or economics, ‘power’ refers to the authority, and the associated ability, to control people and resources. For the current discussion, I adopt a more general definition of ‘power’, one that is more representative of my grandfather’s approach to leadership: the ability of individuals or groups to produce an effect, including guiding and empowering the actions of others.Footnote 1 I use ‘power relations’ as it is commonly employed in social sciences to refer to relationships in which one person or group has higher ability, by virtue of their social positions and resources, to influence the actions of another person or group. By ‘community dynamics’, I refer to the totality of relationships and power relations in a given community, as well as the underlying historical, cultural, legal, and other factors that inform how people relate to each other.
Understanding Power and Community Dynamics
A general principle of language revitalization is that it both builds and disrupts community dynamics at the same time. To understand why this is so, it is useful to consider two questions that are closely related conceptually, but whose answers can be very different:
What are the social dynamics within a given community?
What do the members of a given community believe to be their ideal social dynamics?
While language revitalization occurs within a context of actual community dynamics, it is very often linked to broader efforts to restore traditional values and community health – that is, to move toward a different community dynamics. In other words, language revitalization is a response to a misalignment between a community’s actual practices and its ideal practices, and although it ultimately restores community well-being, the mismatches that occur during the process can be a source of significant tension.
The disconnect between actual and ideal community dynamics can be particularly severe when a language has gone out of use completely, as occurred with myaamia. In these situations, the traditional norms of language transmission and socialization that many people believe to be ideal must at least temporarily be modified. For example, an ideal I have frequently heard articulated in Indigenous communities is that languages should be transmitted through everyday cultural practices from older generations to youth. In my community, this ideal of course could not be realized in our initial stage of revitalization, which entailed learning myaamia from documents. In communities where the only first-language speakers are elders, a different problem sometimes results: ‘speaker’ may become overly associated with ‘elder’, although this link exists only because of language endangerment. Such thinking can work against revitalization if it fosters a situation in which younger people are deemed to never be legitimate speakers, even when they learn a language to a high level of proficiency. The role of writing presents another noteworthy example: The ideal may be for a language to not be written. However, given that revitalization responds to a situation in which traditional language transmission mechanisms have been compromised, writing may become necessary. Ideas about gender provide yet another example: Community members’ ideas about gendered cultural roles may clash with the values held by other community members, and might also conflict with practical needs even when there is agreement about gender roles. For instance, there may not be any speakers of the appropriate gender to perform a given traditional activity.
I have found two interventions to be useful for addressing conflicts that arise in these situations. First is open acknowledgement and discussion of the idea that language revitalization often entails engaging in social practices that are different from the ‘ideal’ community dynamic, but that can serve as a means of moving toward different social norms should community members want this. Second is recognition that conflicting opinions about community dynamics, while challenging to deal with in the moment, provide evidence that people are invested in their community’s future, and this is a good thing.
Power also can guide beliefs about language structure (grammar and vocabulary in particular) and norms of use.Footnote 2 Describing, researching, and especially learning and speaking languages promote certain ways of understanding, and by extension of thinking about, language. A common phenomenon is that whatever is true for the people who have social power becomes the ‘correct’ grammar and pronunciation for a given language, as well as the ‘right’ way to think about it. Key for revitalization planning, therefore, is the identification of the underlying community dynamics in a language revitalization effort and consideration of how these play out in guiding language beliefs and practices.
The same principle also applies to language resource materials. Even something that is called ‘language description’ and has no intent of imposing a certain way of speaking may nevertheless have this effect, especially when the person creating the description has higher social status than the person learning from it. Commonly this happens in language revitalization contexts with published language materials, such as grammar reference books whose descriptions can take on a level of truth, though they are arguably examples of possible analyses by experts trained with particular tools. A strategy for minimizing this problem is to acknowledge (and celebrate) the specific backgrounds of individual speakers and researchers who have contributed to creating language resources. For language speakers, this includes mention of where they learned the language and other factors that inform how they speak and think about language. For researchers, this includes noting how their training influences what they notice and conclude, as well as how they present their analyses.
Another important issue arises with outside researchers, such as linguists, which is that their credentials and expert status often cooccur with racial and socioeconomic privilege, both of which enhance social power. Even researchers who are themselves members of language communities, as is the case for me, often enjoy relatively high social power, though of course equally important as professional credentials are their other traits such as age, gender, membership in a given family, and previous community engagement. As a general lesson, one might say that everybody involved in a language revitalization effort benefits from being aware of these issues, and that the people with higher social power have an increased responsibility to acknowledge how what they say and do may influence others, regardless of intent.
Identifying and Respecting All Stakeholders
Recognizing that tribal community dynamics do not occur in a vacuum, a general practice of my grandfather was to look beyond our tribal community and to foster alliances with members of other communities. This practice has come to characterize myaamia language revitalization programs, which ultimately are for Miami people but nevertheless include non-Miami people in a variety of roles. That is to say, myaamia language revitalization, similar to other cases of Indigenous language revitalization, has many stakeholders – people and institutions with a concern and interest in the process. In this section, I address types of stakeholders and the importance of identifying and considering their perspectives.
For this discussion, I call attention to two major categories of stakeholders in situations of language endangerment and revitalization: community-internal stakeholders and community-external stakeholders. Within the former group are the community members with language knowledge,Footnote 3 current and future language learners, community leaders in language programs and elsewhere, and others with various levels of community engagement. Within the latter group are researchers whose professional work engages with Indigenous languages, various governments, funding agencies, educational institutions and educators, and the wider public.Footnote 4
Frequently omitted in discussions of stakeholders, but very important for understanding Indigenous language revitalization and related work, is that many communities also recognize stakeholders beyond living humans. Ancestors, for example, may be stakeholders; my late grandfather is among the stakeholders of myaamia language revitalization. A higher power, however conceived of or named, may have provided the gift of language to the community and thus becomes a stakeholder that must be thanked and honored. Similarly, beyond being the literal foundation on which people speak and transmit languages, land may be a key stakeholder. Indeed, specific landscapes are reflected in the grammar and vocabulary of Indigenous languages, and this reflects the relationship between communities and places. To ensure that the full set of stakeholders in a given context can emerge, it is important that ‘relationship’ be defined broadly.
After identifying all stakeholders in a given language context, I have found it useful to consider the following areas to understand their engagement and perspectives: needs, expertise, and goals. For ease of presentation, I discuss each area separately, though they are interrelated (as with everything else) and thus must be evaluated together.
Needs: Community needs will presumably include language resources, but I omit a discussion of this point because, in my experience, it is generally self-evident to most stakeholders (though the usefulness of the resources that get provided varies significantly). Somewhat less self-evident, in my experience, have been needs that go beyond language such as a means to earn a living, whether direct (a salary for language work, for example), or indirect (as might occur when university-based scholars are expected to publish about the revitalization work they are engaged in). Identifying and responding to these kinds of needs is crucial for revitalization program sustainability over the long term. Also tremendously important, and in my experience frequently overlooked by community-external stakeholders (though sometimes also by community-internal stakeholders), is that language revitalization requires great emotional and spiritual work, thus creating the need for appropriate support. For example, I have found learning myaamia to be very empowering, but it also serves as a reminder of the colonial violence that my ancestors experienced. I thus seek support through relationships with other Indigenous people, both within my community and beyond, who are also reclaiming their languages of heritage in the face of ongoing colonialism.
Expertise: While there are sometimes expectations about what one should give to a revitalization effort, I argue that focusing instead on what one can give, and wants to give, is a better practice. Linguistic knowledge is often highlighted as the key resource in contexts of language endangerment, and indeed many people emphasize language speakers and their importance. However, there is a problem with reducing full persons, who have a variety of roles and relationships, to ‘speakers’ and evaluating them accordingly. Speakers, as with other stakeholders, have various types of knowledge and experience beyond language, and bring preexisting relationships and networks into revitalization projects. They also have diverse needs, which are easy to overlook when a person is reduced to a single trait, such as being a speaker. Putting the focus instead on full persons and all of their relationships is thus called for. More generally, ‘expertise’ for speakers and other stakeholders must be understood broadly to include cultural knowledge, professional training, personal connections, and other abilities that are important to language revitalization efforts.
Goals: I have frequently observed a difference in the goals of community-internal stakeholders, especially those who are most actively engaged in language revitalization programs, compared to community-external stakeholders, especially those that are less directly connected to Indigenous communities. A recurrent pattern is that they all claim to support language revitalization, but have notably different understandings of what ‘language’ is and also of what constitutes successful language revitalization. This has significant implications for understanding goals.
Among many community-external stakeholders, there is recognition of language’s social value and how it reflects and shapes culture, but often in a less direct way than is commonly expressed by members of Indigenous communities. In linguistic science, for example, there is a tendency to privilege structural definitions of ‘language’, where the emphasis is on grammatical patterns. While the discipline of Linguistics is increasingly recognizing cultural approaches to ‘language’, it is nevertheless still common for endangered languages to be analyzed and talked about without reference to the people who claim them. Also common with community-external stakeholders, particularly large groups such as governments and funding agencies, is a tendency for languages to be talked about as if they are objects that can be counted, organized into scientific categories, and preserved.
This contrasts significantly with community members who define ‘language’ in terms of their peoplehood (for example, saying ‘language is us’ or ‘we would not be [community name] without our language’), in terms of spirituality, or with respect to responsibilities they have to acquire and pass on their cultures. I have also heard that ‘language is power’ from many people in revitalization contexts. This may refer to the idea of social power as discussed earlier, or it could refer to ‘power’ in a different way (and of course the definition in a specific context should be clarified) – but the general idea of language’s importance is clear regardless.
It is only after the different stakeholders in a given effort have clarified their definitions of ‘language’ that it becomes feasible to truly understand their language revitalization goals, which tend to be framed both by definitions of ‘language’ and ideas about what constitutes successful revitalization. For second-language learning of major world languages, ‘success’ often entails proficiency in speaking and/or writing. However, while the ability to speak is a widely articulated goal of Indigenous communities – perhaps the most common – it is problematic to assume that dominant language norms map onto those of endangered language communities, or that it is appropriate to overly focus on a revitalization endpoint that may take multiple generations to achieve. Instead I argue that it is more useful to conceive of smaller, measurable goals (for example, ‘I aim to be able to ____ in my language by the end of the summer’ or ‘I want to be able to pray in my language’) that may be located within larger objectives (for example, ‘I want to honor my ancestors’).
In summary, when cultural marginalization has led a community to shift away from its language, revitalization goes far beyond mastering vocabulary and grammar because it includes restoring cultural practices, beliefs, and pride. In other words, it entails building better community dynamics. I conclude this discussion by returning to what I best understand to be my grandfather’s general goals as a tribal leader of the Miami people, and also specifically for myaamia language revitalization. His general goals for the Miami people focused on creating a positive future, which he saw as emerging from a healthy, sustainable community based in strong relationships. His language revitalization goal was the same: a healthy, sustainable community based in strong relationships.
10.1 Power Relationships and Stakeholders: How to Orient Yourself in Complex Situations
For those who want to contribute to revitalization of an endangered language, it is useful to remember that there are many situations in which no acknowledged language authority exists. In addition to this, if the language still has a significant number of speakers, with even more nonspeakers who share the ethnic identity associated with the language and are interested in its revitalization, one has to deal with multiple stakeholders who are linked to each other by complex socio-political relations. In such a case, it is undoubtedly important to respect all the stakeholders and mediate between them for the sake of common cause. However, the circumstances may also require an activist to be selective and decide which party it is more advantageous to side with. Based on my experience with the Makushi community in Guyana, I will share an example of how the variety of stakeholders can present an activist with difficult choices.
The Makushi language, which is spoken in Guyana and Brazil, has been in decline in Guyana for several decades, and although there are probably about 7,000 speakers left in the country, the overwhelming majority of Guyanese Makushi children do not learn the language at home. They are shifting toward English, or more precisely, its local creolized variety.
The main organization involved in the revitalization of the Makushi language in Guyana has been the Makushi Research Unit (MRU), which is also engaged in the promotion of Makushi cultural heritage in general. Each member of the MRU is a native speaker who is a trained translator and/or teacher, and who represents a particular village of the North Rupununi district, where Makushi people are predominant. For about ten years from the end of 1990s, the MRU had the opportunity to teach the Makushi language in local schools and publish several language teaching materials, but a lack of financial support has forced the group to reduce its activities. As a result, the language is currently taught only at the Bina Hill Institute to interested students of high-school and post-high-school age.
Bina Hill Institute is an educational organization coordinated and funded by the North Rupununi District Development Board (NRDDB), which consists mainly of Makushi Indigenous leaders. NRDDB relies on village councils, led by village chiefs or toshaos. The Ministry of Indigenous Peoples Affairs also exerts a strong influence upon policies in North Rupununi. The ministry controls the work of NRDDB as well as the NGOs supported by it. In addition, it supervises elections of toshaos and issues permissions for foreign researchers to conduct fieldwork in Indigenous territories. In the case of Makushi, the MRU can be considered an active stakeholder in language policy making; however, there are also other, more passive or potential stakeholders, who may nevertheless have more power and resources. These include: the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples’ Affairs, NRDDB, toshaos and village councils, Bina Hill Institute, elderly native speakers, and foreign researchers. In the event that there is a burst of activity around the language, any of these ‘sleeping’ stakeholders may insist on taking a role in decision-making. So the complexity of relations between them becomes a significant factor in language revitalization process.
It is important to remember that there is rarely an ideal situation in which all stakeholders can act together as a well-coordinated organism, where each of them understands and accepts their role, and does not try to challenge others about authority. Sometimes issues that have nothing to do with language and language revitalization can provoke conflicts between stakeholders. If it is not possible to solve a conflict rapidly, a language activist or researcher will have to decide which stakeholder deserves more respect and support in a given situation.
In revitalization activities, stakeholders will usually differ according to the following criteria:
(1) level of local expertise (knowledge about relevant language, culture, and the social context);
(2) level of general expertise (linguistic knowledge, technical knowledge, teaching skills, social skills, marketing skills, etc.);
(4) quantity of resources (including material and human resources).
I view the importance of these criteria in the same order as they are listed above. Most stakeholders are lacking in at least one of these criteria. In other words, an organization can be well funded and present itself as a stakeholder, but if it is not committed to the cause and lacks necessary expertise, it is justifiable for new contributors to give preference to another organization, or even a small group of people, who are already engaged in revitalization activities and represent home-grown experts. Next, even the greatest commitment to language revitalization cannot replace the knowledge and skills mentioned in the first two criteria. And finally, general expertise may be efficiently applied only when paired with local expertise, which is rarely found among external stakeholders.
Revitalization of a language is a combination of ideas and actions that focus on the language system itself, language users, their attitudes to the language, as well as the methods and domains of language acquisition and usage. Language communities, though, never function in isolation and rarely can fully decide on the future of their language. Most revitalization efforts are eventually confronted with authorities and official policy makers. These higher institutions usually represent the state, whose dominant language is different from the language being revitalized. Obviously the language policies of these institutions do not deal solely with endangered languages. What is more, they usually focus on maintaining and supporting the national, official, dominant languages of the state. The communities who endeavor to revive and strengthen their languages often launch their own strategies, that is they also have a language policy.
Language policies are decisions, positions, and principles regarding language, its nature, and role – any actions that affect language use and usage. This might include language education, writing and spelling, or the choice of language(s) in the public space.
When we think about language policies, we usually mean state or administrative language policies, or ‘top-down’ policies as they are known. On the other hand, all parts of society have language policies, for example, schools, commercial companies, communities, language movements, families, and even individuals. These are called ‘bottom-up’ language policies. Both kinds of policy may be either overt or implicit and unstated, and they are often based on language ideologies (see Chapter 7). Nevertheless, the most powerful and influential parties are often institutions and/or other ‘top-down’ policy makers.
The political concepts and practices of nation states were born and developed in Europe, and are commonly reproduced in other parts of the world. The simplistic image of a ‘nation state’ functioning in just one ‘state-national’ language has been destructive for language diversity; top-down language policy has been widely used as a crucial part of nation building, and these ‘top-down’ policies have largely been based on the imposition of one ‘superior’ language over lesser ‘vernaculars’ or ‘dialects’.
Traditionally ‘nation states’ have been key players in the design and implementation of language policy. In fact, the role of the state has both increased and become more nuanced, as new ‘agenda-setting’ political actors have emerged, both in supranational institutions and agencies, and in subnational (regional, interregional, municipal) administrative bodies and organizations.
The relationship between states, societies, and the economic sector has altered profoundly; social-economic factors now play a much more prominent role in institutional negotiations and affect power relations in language revitalization, maintenance, and planning. For example, recently, there has been growing interest among large (global) retail chains, some financial companies, and local small businesses, in using nonofficial, coofficial, and semiofficial languages (languages recognized and used only in some domains) as part of their promotional strategy. Using bilingual product names, or offering menus or commercials in regional languages, contributes to the promotion of these language varieties and these activities could be used as an argument in favor of further language planning negotiations that aim to promote these language varieties. Therefore, the economic sector might become a valuable ally in language revitalization, regardless of the official attitude of the authorities.
Because some aspects of language are commonly held to be symbolic, that is emblematic of identity, dealing with language policy can arouse strong feelings and highlight the politics of language(s). The politics of language is firmly based on, and also reflects, the relationship between state, nation, ethnicity, language, and identity. It also relates to other issues, such as language rights and language protection, but also social exclusion or restriction based on the language(s) used, enforcement of monolingualism or promotion of multilingualism, migrants’ languages, suppression of dialects, etc. Language rights are often treated as a part of human rights, and can be addressed by nongovernmental organizations or international institutions (see later).
For many people, language policy refers to the goals and intentions of a group or institution, expressed in statements of a political nature. Language communities, activists, and revitalizers can of course express such political statements, too. While such statements vary with time and according to the political constellations of individual languages and their communities, they might include:
media campaigns, including those supported by famous people/celebrities,
lobbying through the MEPs (Members of European Parliament), some of whom have formed the Intergroup for Traditional Minorities, National Communities and Languages.
Language planning involves concrete actions or measures to implement policy decisions. Language planning as a concept is less political, although in practice, all aspects of language planning can become political when combined with power relations, and when requiring negotiations with institutions and policy makers. Both policy and planning need to take into account linguistic and extralinguistic factors. Linguistic factors refer to features of the language itself (such as vocabulary or grammar), whereas extralinguistic factors refer to external influences such as politics, laws, economic factors, attitudes, ideologies, etc.
Traditionally language planning is subdivided into three main types: corpus planning, status and prestige planning, as well as acquisition planning. These subcategories are distinct but interdependent, and each needs to be taken into account when planning language revitalization.
Corpus planning aims at adapting the language to meet the needs and objectives defined in policy making. Usually it seeks to increase the usage of a language by developing its linguistic resources, including vocabulary, grammar, and often writing conventions. For example, the Académie française was founded in 1653 to act as France’s official authority on the usage, vocabulary, and grammar of the French language. Following the example of nation-state language planning activities, minority language communities often establish academies, language boards, or committees of their own, with the objective of developing literary standards and eliminating ‘impurities’ from their language. The very existence of such language agencies is often a prerequisite for language-status recognition by authorities or amongst the general public. Authorities, for example, often require that minority language communities standardize their dialect clusters or linguistic continua to resemble ‘developed’ nation-state languages, whereas public opinion tends to consider nonstandardized language varieties as substandard, for example, dialects, slang, patois, etc. Even though it is not strictly necessary for the revitalization or maintenance of endangered languages, standardization might constitute a decisive argument in negotiations on official recognition of a language.
Status planning aims at changing the functions and uses of a language by influencing who uses it, in which situations and for which purposes. The status of a language can be raised or lowered in relation to other languages, and this often involves the change of its political or legal status.
Negotiating the status of a language variety usually starts as a ‘bottom-up’ initiative by a grassroots actor, and it is this aspect of language planning that most often involves intense power negotiations and deals with institutions and policy makers at various levels.
Grassroots movements and organizations use collective action at the community level to effect change at the local, regional, national, or international level. Grassroots movements are associated with ‘bottom-up’ decision-making and are considered more ‘natural’ or spontaneous than ‘top-down’ initiatives by more traditional power structures. Grassroots movements self-organize to inspire and encourage community members to engage and contribute to actions for their own community; therefore, the profile of their activities also matches language revitalization and language maintenance strategies. In the case of language revitalization programs, it is more and more frequent to have the active participation of engaged outsiders, be it nonnative new speakers of endangered languages or invited experts or researchers. Nevertheless, most studies of language revitalization programs stress that revitalization efforts must not be undertaken without the community of (potential) speakers, let alone against the community.
Grassroots movements not only represent (minority) communities in terms of language-related campaigns or negotiations, they can also advocate environmental issues of vital importance to local, Indigenous communities, such as the Ainu in Hokkaido/Japan, or communities in China and Brazil who oppose construction of dams on their life-giving rivers, or the Sorbs in Lusatia, whose land has been badly damaged by lignite mining. Good leadership is of great importance in ‘bottom-up’ language status planning actions vis-à-vis policy makers. Grenoble and WhaleyFootnote 1 stress that successful leaders have good organizational abilities and are sensitive to both individual differences and collective needs. According to Grenoble and Whaley, the following factors must be taken into account:
an honest assessment of its own level of autonomy and the possibilities or limitations offered to it by its national structure,
a clear articulation of what community members want to do with their language, along with an honest assessment of the attitudes, beliefs, and other obstacles that may prevent them from achieving their goals.
At times, it is the authorities themselves who resolve to settle the political status of a language variety through ‘top-down’ measures. However it would seem much more common for ‘top-down’ language policy to favor the state official language and subordinately rank nondominant languages as coofficial, auxiliary, or heritage, usually refusing any status to languages spoken by immigrants or to varieties that are labeled as dialects.
There are, though, counterexamples to this rule of thumb. A case in point might be the arrangements undertaken by the Portuguese state in reference to the Mirandese language. This geographically peripheral variety of the Astur-Leonese language continuum, which is divided by the Spain–Portugal state border, had been used alongside official Portuguese. Its community had not striven for any particular status or undertaken language-planning activities until the 1990s. At the time, (Western) Europe was intensifying institutional efforts aimed at protecting and promoting the continent’s language diversity. Portugal, despite being an active member of the European community, was nevertheless reluctant to support such institutional initiatives (e.g. refusing to sign or ratify the below-discussed European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages or to accede the European Bureau for Lesser-Used Languages). As a sort of replacement for the European initiatives for endangered languages, in 1999 the Republic of Portugal implemented an arbitrary set of legal measures in support of Mirandese, creating an entirely ‘top-down’ language maintenance program as far as corpus, status, prestige, and acquisition planning were concerned.
Prestige planning is in some ways different from status planning. It aims to make a language acceptable in contexts with high(er) prestige (like science, arts and literature, media) or to create opportunities for use in these types of settings, for example, by establishing new institutions (scientific, educational, artistic, etc.) which function in the language. Prestige planning is also about trying to influence language ideologies and language attitudes (see Chapter 8). Both ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ actions may aim to influence a language’s prestige. Prestige planning also requires good public relations to ensure that policy and planning measures are accepted by the public; if this is not done, they are unlikely to succeed. It is also important to pay attention to the attitudes of majority populations, especially if public money is requested to support minority languages, as their taxes will be spent on it.
Dealing with policy makers to build up and strengthen the prestige of a community language might be quite challenging in the case of varieties that are perceived as ugly, un(der)developed, poor, corroded, spoiled, transitional, uneducated, etc. Throughout modern history many, if not most, nondominant languages all over the world have been stigmatized by nation-state societies with the above labels. Therefore, it is crucial for there to be a sustained destigmatization of nondominant language varieties, as well as the promotion of multilingualism and language diversity. For some communities this includes destigmatization at the lowest level of linguistic variation (e.g. dialectal).
Destigmatization may sometimes lead to a change of status of language varieties. For instance, a long-term ‘bottom-up’ campaign in favor of the endangered Ryukyuan languages has recently resulted in a ‘top-down’ agreement amongst many Japanese linguists to revise and restructure the hitherto linguistic classification of Ryukyuan as dialects of Japanese. Ryukyu is a southern archipelago of Japan, where each of the islands used to form a separate speech community. Recently the term ‘Japanese language’ has been replaced by ‘Japonic languages’ (or ‘Japanese–Ryukyuan language family’), to include Ryukyuan as a complex of individual languages. This change of terminology clearly resulted in a reinforcement of revitalization efforts by some of the Ryukyuan insular communities.
In Europe, there has been a significant change in the prestige of individual language varieties, which were previously considered ‘dialects’, ‘patois’, ‘platt’, or ‘speech’. This has been a result of the introduction of the term ‘regional languages’ by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (see later). Following the introduction of the Charter, Germany decided to recognize Low German as Regionalsprache, Poland declared Kashubian a język regionalny, the Netherlands sanctioned Low Saxon and Limburgian as streektalen, whereas Scots and Ulster Scots gained recognition as regional languages in the United Kingdom. Other language communities, such as Venetian, Piedmontese or Sicilian in Italy, or Latgalian in Latvia, have actively sought the same status when strengthening their language revitalization efforts.
It is common for top-down policy and planning actions officially (but very superficially) to promote minority languages among minority communities themselves. This is often done instead of adopting a more inclusive and multifaceted campaigns, which simultaneously address minority speakers, government administration, societal authorities (experts, specialists, celebrities, distinguished activists), nongovernment organizations, and other policy actors. An example of the former may be the relatively ineffective Campaign promoting the use of national/ethnic minority/regional languages, carried out by the Polish government in 2014. This action was actually required by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages Committee of Experts’ Report, so ministry officials hastily prepared and published some web materials and printed texts regarding certain minorities. These materials were then sent out to the very same minority institutions, who had actually been involved in preparing them. As might be expected, the next report that the Polish authorities sent to the Council of Europe referred to the ‘effective promotion of use of minority languages’.
Achieving an internationally recognized language status should also be an important aim for a community when negotiating other language planning issues and policies with decision makers. One possible option is to apply for an ISO code, also known as Codes for the Representation of Names of Languages. These codes are used to classify languages by the Library of Congress in Washington, DC (USA) and by the lists of languages published by EthnologueFootnote 2 and Glottolog.Footnote 3 Each language is assigned two or three letters – the most common three-letter codes are allotted by an institution called SIL International,Footnote 4 which receives and reviews applications for requesting new language codes and for any changes to existing ones. Languages are eligible for a code if they are ‘in use by a group of people for human communication, and […] have been in use for a period of time’. For example, previously unrecognized language communities in Poland, including Kashubian, Silesian, and Wilamowice’s Wymysiöeryś, have been successful in receiving the codes: csb, szl, and wym respectively. Kashubian is now a recognized regional language, while the two latter communities strive for state recognition as a part of their intense campaigns for language maintenance and revitalization. Although some applications for ISO codes are rejected, they are often given suggestions on how to modify proposals for resubmission.
Acquisition planning focuses on language transmission, language learning and teaching, (re)gaining language skills, language shift, bi- or multilingualism patterns, plus – in a wider context – foreign and second language learning. Occasionally acquisition planning is considered to be the same as language revitalization and maintenance. People assume that because schools are so good at killing languages, they can also save languages. Therefore, many minority communities perceive teaching their endangered language in school as THE objective and/or the main tool of language revitalization.
Acquisition policy is often not compatible with educational policy (of a state, region, group, denomination, etc.). However, every so often, an institutional language teaching curriculum is an important factor when negotiating language planning strategies such as revitalization, or when dealing with regulations. Granting the right to teach a language often means giving access to the education system, and providing teaching of a language (usually) means that it has official recognition. Therefore, communities often strive to have their language used in the school system as proof of the status of their language.
All over the world, educational authorities, as well as communities themselves, delude their societies and international institutions into believing that a couple of hours of lessons a week in a school curriculum is effective for language acquisition. This overlooks the difference between the teaching of a language (usually on a much less effective base than the official or and foreign languages) and teaching in a native language. Many minority-language communities, not to mention the dominant society majorities or decision-making authorities, are not aware of issues relating to language acquisition in minority–majority situations, the bi-/multilingual development of a child, or effective teaching methods. Furthermore, when planning teaching provisions for minority languages, it seems quite common for both minority groups and educational authorities to ignore findings from psycholinguistics, multilingualism, and language acquisition studies. Therefore, more information and education are basic requirements when negotiating and developing a model of language teaching.
As in many revitalization efforts, community engagement is crucial when designing language acquisition strategies. One should remember that it is not the school itself that helps the young members of a community to acquire the language; when negotiating educational provisions with the policy makers, special attention should be devoted to the particular language teaching methods that will be used, such as (early) immersion, language nests, bi-/multilingual teaching, or Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL, which can be understood as ‘culture-and-language-integrated learning’). Not infrequent are cases when schools put children off the minority language, by teaching them in a mostly ineffective and boring way.
There are some minority-language teaching programs that were started entirely on the initiative of the communities, for example, the Diwan Federation of Breton-medium schools in Brittany/France, or AББA – Association of Belarusian parents (now active as the Association for Belarusian-learning children and youth) in Podlachia/Poland. Through intense and far-sighted activity, both organizations managed to get recognition from educational authorities and introduce their community languages into mainstream school curricula.
The most effective teaching programs seem to be those that not only offer teaching of and in the community language, but also try to (re)create, (re)describe, research, and (re)interpret holistically the Indigenous worldview. Innovative curricula have been implemented at Sámi allaskuvla (Sámi University of Applied Sciences) in Guovdageaidnu=Kautokeino, Norway, Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani (University of Hawai’i College of Hawaiian) at Hilo, and in native Northern American institutions, who act in accordance with the Indigenous Nations’ Higher Education Program as part of the World Indigenous Nations University initiative. Such institutions themselves become productive and influential policy makers, acting as language planners and community representatives at both regional and international levels.
Teaching of an (endangered) language must include many, if not all of the above aspects of language planning, and not solely a teaching network. A language should possess a developed corpus, and have an established status and a stable or growing level of prestige to function efficiently within the society.
Of course, some forms of language planning in revitalization contexts go beyond the simple three-part classification described above. One example is so-called language normalization, which involves incorporating many aspects of language planning into holistic projects aimed at language empowerment in many social and public domains – for example, the normalización lingüística adapted for the communities of Basque, Catalan, Galician, Asturian in Spain.
Another example is the standardization of a language, which involves both corpus and status planning. A common opinion is that different human societies speak, or at least ought to speak, distinct languages with clear boundaries. This belief is strongly influenced by ideas of state nationalism originating in Europe. According to this belief, linguistic boundaries involve a clearly defined grammar, lexicon, phonetic inventory, and rules of usage, and, if possible, a writing system. Moreover it is commonly believed that linguistic boundaries should correspond to a particular political and geographical context. Generally many societies and authorities would gladly see the world neatly structured into distinct nation states, each with a fully fledged nation-state-language, a standardized stable communication system, with defined numbers of speakers, names of languages, norms, status, etc.
Historically the term standard language was established over the course of the nineteenth century. It is only in the twenty-first century, however, that this otherwise technical term has become more prominent in modern discourse. The standard language ideology suggests that certain languages exist mainly, or only, in standardized forms. This belief affects the way in which speakers’ communities think about their own language and about ‘language’ in general. One may say that speakers of these languages live in standard language cultures. Given these widely held beliefs, it seems important to have regular information campaigns addressed to the authorities, policy makers, and also the dominant speech communities. These campaigns should shed light on the diversity of languages, demonstrating how linguistic variation occurs over time and territories, and according to social factors. This is especially important for minority, lesser-standardized, and endangered languages. Majorities should be systematically familiarized with terms and ideas such as language revival, maintenance, spread, modernization, normalization, etc.
Since the mid-twentieth century, language planning processes have gained a supra-national or trans-national dimension, particularly in light of a global interest in (linguistic) human rights. Minority language communities and, sometimes, individual speakers, may refer to certain international legal instruments when dealing with state-level authorities.
Worth mentioning are the following:
United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights
United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Persons belonging to National, Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities.Footnote 5
These can be referred to or invoked when (re)claiming rights to native heritage and Indigenous languages. It should be mentioned, however, that the international language rights regimes has, in recent times, come under harsh criticism for their vagueness, ineffectiveness and lack of consistent legal instruments of enforcement.
Nevertheless, one useful outcome of the UNESCO programs concerning endangered languages and linguistic diversity is its 2003 framework for assessing the relationship between attitudes as articulated by government policy and language vitality. It differentiates six levels of explicit policy and/or implicit attitudes toward the dominant and subordinate languages (vis-à-vis the national language) by governments and institutions:
Equal support: All of a country’s languages are valued as assets. All languages are protected by law, and the government encourages the maintenance of all languages by implementing explicit policies.
Differentiated support: Nondominant languages are explicitly protected by the government, but there are clear differences in the contexts in which the dominant/official language(s) and nondominant (protected) language(s) are used. The government encourages ethnolinguistic groups to maintain and use their languages, most often in private domains (as the home language), rather than in public domains (e.g. in schools). Some of the domains of nondominant language use enjoy high prestige (e.g. at ceremonial occasions).
Passive assimilation: The dominant group is indifferent as to whether or not minority languages are spoken, as long as the dominant group’s language is the language of interaction. Though this is not an explicit language policy, the dominant group’s language is the de facto official language. Most domains of nondominant language use do not enjoy high prestige.
Active assimilation: The government encourages minority groups to abandon their own languages by providing education for the minority group members in the dominant language. Speaking and/or writing in nondominant languages is not encouraged.
Forced assimilation: The government has an explicit language policy declaring the dominant group’s language to be the only official national language, whereas the languages of subordinate groups are neither recognized nor supported.
Prohibition: Minority languages are prohibited from use in any domain. Languages may be tolerated in private domains.
Minority language communities in European states might also use and invoke some of the legal provisions concerning the rights of Europe’s minorities and their languages. In the 1990s and 2000s, institutionalized and legally binding protection and promotion of ethnic and linguistic diversity in Europe dominated the agenda of institutions like the Council of Europe, who prepared and promoted three significant documents:
European Convention on Human Rights,
Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, and particularly
The latter has been proclaimed the first international instrument directed solely at the question of language, setting language rights firmly in the context of the value of cultural diversity for its own sake. The preamble to the Charter states, for example, that ‘the protection of the historical regional or minority languages of Europe, some of which are in danger of eventual extinction, contributes to the maintenance and development of Europe’s cultural wealth and traditions’. Another innovation has been the implementation instruments of the Charter, as the selection of provisions adopted for each individual language depended on their situation. Member states of the Council of Europe have been vigorously encouraged to sign and ratify the Charter, and countries that have implemented it have been submitted to periodical monitoring by the Committee of Experts, who were to be independent specialists.
After almost thirty years, views on the Charter’s efficacy are divided. It is in force in twenty-five states, but the attitudes of individual states vary considerably – from diligent fulfillment of all the commitments (in states that already had developed systems of support for endangered language communities) to propaganda simulation (as in the above-mentioned case of Poland). This is not to mention the states that refuse to apply the Charter in the foreseeable future (as in the interesting case of Portugal, referred to earlier). Indeed, some state authorities, in accordance with their general language policies, refuse to officially recognize (or to support in any form) languages and language communities (such as Wymysiöeryś or Silesian in Poland, Rusyn in Ukraine). Hardly any appeals made by language communities in Europe regarding the legal obligations set out in the Charter have proven successful.
11.1 Language Revitalization and Academic Institutions: Refocusing Linguistic Field Methods Courses
Language revitalization can only be successful if it is community-driven, addressing the needs and goals of community members. There is therefore an inherent challenge for carrying out revitalization projects within academic institutions, where Indigenous community members are typically under-represented, and where the primary focus is on research – that is, research in the narrower sense of systematic investigation for the purpose of advancing (Western) scientific knowledge. Here we discuss one model for initiating or advancing language revitalization or maintenance projects in a graduate-level field methods course in a US academic institution.
Not all graduate linguistics programs value language revitalization, language documentation, or even linguistic fieldwork, and not all programs offer courses on these topics. When field methods courses are offered, they often involve a single community member, and the primary goal is to do linguistic analysis through elicitation. Such courses follow a traditional, colonial model that reinforces the divide between researchers and a research ‘subject’. In field methods courses that follow such a model, community-driven language revitalization may be impossible.
The traditional mold can be broken by using a field methods course to establish a community-based language research project, or by building the course into an existing one. For example, as part of an ongoing collaboration, University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) linguists and the Mixteco/Indígena Community Organizing Project (MICOP) recruited community members for UCSB’s 2015–16 and 2017–18 field methods courses. MICOP’s mission is to aid, organize, and empower the migrant community along California’s central coast (see Capsule 6.2), and the courses have advanced MICOP’s mission by supporting a community-based language research and activism project (see Capsule 13.2).
In these field methods courses at UCSB, graduate students and community members work in close collaboration to gain extensive training in language documentation and linguistic analysis in a community-based research model. While traditional field methods activities such as analysis of the sound system (phonology), orthography design, documentation of lexis (vocabulary), audio-video recording, transcription and translation, grammar writing, ethics, and archival deposit preparation are part of the course, graduate students and community members learn these skills together. The activities and outcomes are shaped by the goals and interests of the community members, and a special focus is placed on developing practical materials for language maintenance and use in the community, such as trilingual illustrated text collections, games, and language activities that are shared with the wider Indígena community of Ventura County, California during MICOP’s monthly meetings.
Crucially the course provides extensive training to community members who then go on to use its tools and methods as leaders in their own language maintenance or pedagogical activities in the community. While some graduate students in the course pursue or continue research in other subfields of linguistics or with communities in other parts of the world, other students continue working with and supporting the local community members in their language-related activities as they themselves progress through their graduate education. Although not every institution is located near a potential partner community, field methods courses can refocus institutional resources to train students in a community-based model in which course activities and assignments are determined by the interests and goals of the speaker in order to support their language community.
Introduction
Over recent decades, many individuals, communities, peoples, and nations worldwide have been trying to ‘revitalise’ their languages, namely to keep using them despite great pressure to switch to more widely spoken languages such as English, Spanish, Chinese and so on. Across roughly the same time period, we have seen the emergence of new kinds of cooperation, communication, networking, solidarity, or ‘making links’ (we generally keep to the term ‘cooperation’ throughout this chapter). Think, for example, of the Zapatista movement in Mexico and its international links, or the many instances of Basque-Mapuche solidarity, such as the organisation Millaray, which operate on the basis that these two peoples have similar struggles. Yet there is not much overlap between these two types of initiative. In many cases, it seems that endangered language (EL) activists carry out their work in relative isolation from other EL communities, despite the fact that thousands of other language communities worldwide are in the same situation. Similarly, most cooperation initiatives of the Zapatista kind do not directly address language endangerment and revitalisation.
In this chapter, we draw attention to those few initiatives that are working in the intersection between language revitalisation and international cooperation (using ‘international’ in the broadest sense, to include unrecognised nations). We explain why working in this intersection is a good idea; we then look at some of the features that define cooperation for language revitalisation, before going on to highlight some of the features that make for especially effective cooperation.
Advantages to Cooperating with Other EL Communities
We believe there are at least four ways in which EL communities can benefit from communication and cooperation with other EL communities.
First, language endangerment can be emotionally painful, and language revitalisation can be hard work with little reward. These two burdens are often made worse by being borne in isolation: EL communities are often isolated in some way, even if not always geographically. In fact, it is often thanks to this isolation that the language has survived up until now, but isolation can also mean isolation from other EL communities. However, when a member of one EL community connects with one from a different EL community, they may realise that their community is not the only one struggling with language endangerment.
Different EL communities go through different stages of activity and passivity. Connecting a community that has little ‘revitalisation momentum’ to another that is full of activity can inspire enthusiasm for revitalisation in the first community. For example, language activists in the Basque Country, where some people perceive revitalisation momentum to have stagnated, have felt the benefit of connecting with Indigenous language activists from Latin America, where language revitalisation is, in some ways, a more recent phenomenon.
Second, the field of language revitalisation is very young in human history. There is no ‘ABC’ of language revitalisation and there are few success stories. Therefore, it is vital for those involved to learn from each other.
Third, revitalisation may be easier if EL communities share resources (methodologies, staff, materials, software, etc.) or even implement initiatives together (e.g. applying for major funding together).
Fourth, linked to the third point, when EL communities join forces they can improve their prospects for lobbying large institutions and have more success in putting language revitalisation on the political agenda.
What Are Cooperation and Communication?
The following six points help to distinguish cooperation-oriented initiatives from other kinds of language revitalisation initiatives, although the boundary inevitably blurs in places: the concept of language revitalisation has emerged out of the connections between EL communities around the world (think, for example, of the Māori language nests which have inspired similar projects worldwide). We also recognise that people in different EL contexts may consider different factors relevant, and so these six points sometimes highlight ways in which initiatives can vary. Under each heading we also provide suggestions for starting, or furthering, cooperation, and communication.
Direct Contact between EL Communities
We consider cooperation to involve direct contact between representatives of different endangered language communities, for example between members of two different nations in North America (one author witnessed such a visit during a language camp). We believe it is important to hear about the experiences of other communities ‘from the horse’s mouth’ rather than through the filter of a third party, especially since this third party is often associated with an institution of power built upon European colonialism, at least in the Americas, Australia and Aotearoa (New Zealand). In saying this, we would like to bring language revitalisation a little more in line with decolonisation and grassroots solidarity in other fields, an idea developed by Khelselim Rivers of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) Nation in Canada in his talk on ‘Decolonizing Language Revitalization’.Footnote 1
Nonetheless, a third party, often a university, can play a role in bringing about direct contact between speakers from different EL communities. The Foundation for Endangered Languages conferences, the Congreso de Lenguas Indígenas in Chile, and the International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation are three such events we know of. In such situations it is essential to bear in mind the historical relationship between EL speakers and the institution in question. For example, at academic conferences we have heard some speakers acknowledging, at the beginning of their talk, that they represent a colonial institution.
It is worth considering whether cooperation occurs between just two EL communities, or between three, four, or even more. For example, there have been links for many years between Basque and Mapuche language activists in the Basque Country (Spain/France) and the Wallmapu (Chile/Argentina) respectively. In terms of three-way cooperation there have been links between Mi’kmaw, Gaelic, and Acadian revitalisation efforts in Nova Scotia (Canada). Other initiatives are designed to create links between members of many different EL communities, such as HIGA! 2nd Summit of Young Speakers of Minoritized Languages. This was held in July 2018 in the Basque city of Gasteiz and for four days seventy young language activists from thirty-two different language communities from around the world attended workshops, shared their experiences, and strengthened relationships that could promote future cooperation in language revitalisation.
We suggest: Take advantage of any existing opportunities to meet activists from other EL communities (often through third parties), and/or take the initiative in making links yourself. It may take several tries before you find someone with whom you can establish a good relationship: don’t give up!
One-to-One Contact, NGO-to-NGO Contact, Ministry-to-Ministry Contact
As soon as a member of one EL community begins a conversation with a member of another, this could be seen as communication or cooperation. Indeed, much valuable exchange of experiences arises from such encounters: for example, Mick Mallon from Ireland helps Inuktitut teachers in language pedagogy, teaches Inuktitut himself, and is regarded as one of Canada’s top scholars in the academic study of Inuktitut.Footnote 2 However, it seems to us that the majority of cooperation initiatives probably occur with the involvement of NGOs or similar organisations, such as The Language Conservancy, Mugarik Gabe, or the Endangered Language Alliance.
There are also some instances of communication and cooperation at a more institutional level, such as the First Peoples’ Cultural Council (FPCC), which coordinates much language revitalisation work between First Nations in British Columbia, Canada. One rare example on an international scale is the agreement to cooperate on language policy signed between the CONADI in Chile and the representatives of the Vice Secretariat of Language Policy from the Basque Autonomous Community.Footnote 3 While some initiatives are thought of as more ‘top-down’, e.g. The Network for Promoting Linguistic Diversity, others are more ‘bottom-up’, e.g. Mapuche language camps.
We suggest: Think carefully about the pros and cons of going through a larger organisation. If it will be helpful, how exactly? Sometimes it is politically necessary, although not helpful; but accepting this (at least for the time being) is better than having political controversy jeopardise the initiative. How much time and effort will you need to invest in the organisational framework, for instance communicating with a government ministry and following all of their procedural requirements, and will it be worth it?
Each of these levels of cooperation can help in different ways, and it will depend on the EL community which level is most appropriate and most valuable. One author’s experiences in both Mapuche and Yanesha territories (the former in Chile and Argentina, the latter in Peru) provide an example of this. In the Yanesha case, all interested parties considered the Yanesha Federation a crucial institution for any project involving the Yanesha language, and the Federation seemed to have widespread recognition as legitimately representing the Yanesha. By contrast, in the Mapuche case there is no such organisation and contacts are much more one-to-one.
This chapter is not the place to discuss all of the possible activities that can come under the umbrella of language revitalisation. Instead, in this section, we outline only those activities that EL communities have engaged in when working together, in the cases we know of. We have categorised these under the headings of training, reflection/evaluation, art, and language policy. By training we mean activities where EL communities share skills relevant to any aspects of revitalisation, from second language learning/teaching to awareness raising. An example of training is the diploma in language revitalisation strategy run by the Basque NGO Garabide, which has been attended mostly by participants from Latin American Indigenous groups.
Training activities aim to share established best practices in revitalisation strategy, for example the principle of not spending all your energy trying to make the language an official language while ignoring the fact that parents are no longer speaking the language to their children. By contrast, other initiatives focus on identifying, reflecting upon, or evaluating best practices. Many academic initiatives have this focus. One example is Hitzargiak (Summit of Good Practices in Language Revitalization), a project designed to encourage the exchange of ideas between EL communities in Europe. Slightly less academic is Hitz Adina Mintzo, a seminar on minoritised languages organised by Oihaneder, the House of the Basque Language.
A rather different kind of approach is seen in artistic activities, where participants from different language communities reflect on their language(s) through art and draw motivation from hearing about other experiences. An excellent example of this is Wapikoni Mobile, which is a First Nations film studio in Quebec that supports Indigenous directors in producing films, often in Indigenous languages. Other examples of such initiatives, which we leave the reader to look up at their leisure, include the Last Whispers project, TOSTA, European Capitals of Culture (a more top-down initiative), Europa bat-batean (Summit of Sung Improvised Poetry genres, a more bottom-up initiative), or Celtic Neighbours/Y Fro (a culture-related regional entity).
Lastly efforts to influence language policy are a distinct kind of activity. This includes demonstrations against oppressive language policy, legal efforts to change language legislation and initiatives to monitor language policy and language rights such as the European Network for Language Equality (ELEN) or Linguoresistencia.
There can be much overlap between training, reflection/evaluation, art, and language policy. For example, an event focused on the language may raise awareness, provide opportunities for speakers to meet each other and use the language, stimulate people to reflect on revitalisation strategy, and also include artwork to inspire people.
We suggest: Different resources are needed in different EL contexts. For example, some EL activists may be enthusiastic about teaching the language but need more effective language teaching methodology; others may be the opposite. Some may be so caught up in the day-to-day activities that they have no time to reflect whether they are putting their time and energy to the most effective use; others may be the opposite. So it is important to assess community needs first, and structure cooperation so that it addresses the most urgent needs. This might even mean choosing which EL community you cooperate with according to whether it has expertise in the area needed: for example, the Catalan initiative Taller d’Espai Linguistic Personal (TELP) seems to be unique in offering workshops focussing on language choice in daily interaction. Once you have identified these needs, you can then think about what activities best address them.
Long-Lasting, Tangible Outputs from Cooperation: Language Materials, Films, Legal Documents
Sometimes communication and cooperation between EL communities results in tangible outputs such as language materials, films, and legal documents. Unlike the activities mentioned above, these may outlast the link between two particular EL communities. Some examples of films are:
Beltzean Mintzo and ArNasa TxiKitxuak, two documentaries by Garabide on the sociolinguistic situation of Latin American Indigenous communities,
The documentary Don de Lenguas, an attempt by Spanish state TV (RTVE) to inform Spanish citizens about language diversity within its territories and
The documentary Yezhoù, by the Breton language activist Morgan Lincy Fercot, who travelled around Europe for almost a year visiting minoritised language communities, discovering local language revitalisation initiatives and interviewing local people.
Although media outputs may be designed to influence majority communities, we have observed that they have an important impact on other EL communities. For example, Basque documentaries on language revitalisation have received attention within revitalisation movements in Indigenous Latin America.
Other initiatives are, or result in, legal documents, such as the Protocol to Ensure Language Rights or The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, developed by the Council of Europe, which has played a fundamental role in language revitalisation in Europe. We consider these a form of cooperation since they result from an exchange between EL communities on their language rights.
We suggest: If you are producing outputs of this kind with other EL communities in mind, consider which will give most ‘bang for your buck’, i.e. be most useful to as many other EL communities as possible. For example, in producing the documentary ArNasa TxiKitxuak, filmed in Spanish, subtitled in Basque, and covering a wide variety of Latin American Indigenous groups, Mondragon University created something accessible to EL activists throughout Spanish-speaking Latin America.
Regional, National or International Cooperation: Who to Cooperate With?
Cooperation and communication may occur entirely in the place where people speak, or spoke, the languages in question, particularly in cases where EL communities live in the same or nearby territories, e.g. Tehuelche, Mapuche, and Welsh in Chubut, Argentina, or Mi’kmaw, Gaelic, and Acadian in Nova Scotia, Canada. Some instances of cooperation and communication occur at an international or intercontinental level, such as solidarity between the Basque Country and Latin America. Others occur at a more regional level, such as the many instances of solidarity within North America, within Latin America (e.g. PROEIB in the Andes), or between peoples of the Atlantic coast (e.g. the Atlantic Meeting). Others operate at a national level, in cases where there are multiple languages spoken within the country, e.g. NEȾOLṈEW̱ for Indigenous languages in Canada. Still others occur between EL communities of a particular language family, e.g. the Celtic League or North American Association of Celtic Language Teachers. This may be the case even if the language family has expanded beyond its traditional geographical boundaries, e.g. Gaelic in Scotland and Nova Scotia or Welsh in Wales and Chubut. Solidarity may also happen in geographical locations alien to EL speakers/activists. For instance, the First Symposium of Minority Languages and Varieties of the Iberian Peninsula was held in Alcanena, where mainly Portuguese is spoken (Minderico is spoken just a few kilometers away).
We suggest: Consider carefully who you can keep up a long-term connection with. We have seen cases where language activists were in touch with Basque language activists on another continent but were unaware of revitalisation efforts for immigrant languages going on in their own town. Not only is a local connection more sustainable ecologically (avoiding international flights etc.), but it is likely to be more sustainable socially. A long-distance trip might be exciting, but how much will you be able to keep up long-distance contact, realistically? Activists operating in the same place also tend to better understand the context that their neighbour has to deal with. To give a simple example, Mapuche, Quechua and Haitian activists in Chile understand how the Chilean governmental grants for cultural activities work. Of course, they are also likely to share a common dominant language, e.g. English in the case of Gaelic, Mi’kmaw, and Acadian activists.
We recognise that our understanding is strongly shaped by our geographical focus on Europe and the Americas, and particularly by cooperation between the two. At the same time, this geographical bias is not coincidental. It is a result of the uneven distribution of resources between EL communities in Europe as distinct from EL communities elsewhere. We hope that in the future others will be inspired to undertake and write about similar kinds of cooperation in other regions of the world, e.g. links between the Ainu in Japan and other EL communities, about which we know little.
Cooperating and Communicating Online
The Internet is an important medium for cooperation and communication: take, for example, the many Facebook groups created with the aim of language revitalisation. Social media is a major asset for language revitalisation and networking, as it enables individuals to interact with others and share experiences, organise activities, and learn about a greater number of initiatives, events, and people.
We suggest: Think carefully about what kind of cooperation can be carried out online. This might range from everything to nothing. For example, in the case of language learning/teaching methodologies, we believe it is essential to cooperate in person, as learning/teaching is such a holistic experience. Generally we believe strongly in the value of cooperation in person, because we believe in the continuing importance of using the language in face-to-face communication even if, ultimately, you would like to be using your language in all areas of life. Other contexts for language use (e.g. written, film) are secondary in promoting revitalisation, although they can be very important supports.
What Leads to Effective Cooperation and Communication
In this section, we outline factors that have seemed to help cooperation and communication in the cases we know of, and expand these into suggestions for EL activists who are interested in working with another EL community. However we wouldn’t want our readers to be discouraged from communicating with another EL community just because they do not tick all of these ‘boxes’; all EL communities are different and an issue that is crucial in one context may be less important in another, and vice versa.
Finding People Who Are Interested in Language Revitalisation in the Other Community and Establishing a Productive Relationship
There is no point trying to engage in cooperation with an EL community where everyone has decided they are not interested in language revitalisation. Similarly, even if there are people interested in revitalisation, there is no point trying to engage in cooperation if nobody is interested in cooperation. Cooperation may often begin with a simple inquiry and, over time, links between the communities may strengthen.
We suggest: Look for people in another community that are already most active in language revitalisation. These are likely to be the people you will find anyway, since they are the people you will be able to track down. This could be by word of mouth, searching for relevant groups online, or by contacting a third party such as a linguist or anthropologist who knows the community. Look for people who have already shown an interest in connecting with other EL activists. There are not many such people; so don’t rule out cooperation just because you can’t find anyone. Meeting someone with whom you establish a productive relationship is probably more important than anything else.
The Historical Relationship between the EL Communities
Cooperation and communication seem to be most likely between EL communities that have suffered under the same colonial power, e.g. speakers of Mi’kmaw, Gaelic and Acadian French in the English-speaking British colonial system. However, cooperation between people who have suffered under the same colonial power but in different ways, especially speakers of European ELs versus other ELs, must be aware of these differences and take them into account. One must also acknowledge the fact that speakers of European ELs were themselves part of the European colonisation of the Americas and elsewhere.
If the relationship between two EL communities dates back a long time, then cooperation and communication are likely to be more effective and enduring. For example, Catalans and Basques have cooperated for decades in language revitalisation and this is partly due to a shared struggle with the same two states, Spain and France.
Nowadays, perhaps the most common situation that brings together speakers of ELs is migration to the same city, in which case they share a common experience of migration. The Endangered Language Alliance in New York and Toronto are initiatives to facilitate cooperation in this situation.
We suggest: Look for people who have an experience of language endangerment that is similar to yours. Acknowledge any important differences in the experience of language endangerment and revitalisation, but do not let these differences stand in the way of communicating and collaborating.
A Shared Language
EL communities that have been subject to the same colonial power (e.g. Spain) usually also face the same dominant language (e.g. Spanish). Clearly, having a common language makes cooperation and communication a lot easier: for example, in 2016 Inuit visitors to Wales learning about Welsh revitalisation were able to communicate through English.Footnote 4 Unfortunately, this common language is often precisely the dominant language against which you are struggling, meaning that your cooperation involves yet more time speaking that dominant language; nevertheless, this may be a price worth paying in the long term, if the cooperation is fruitful.
In a few cases people manage to cooperate without using the dominant language, e.g. Hitz Adina Mintzo, the series of talks on EL issues that is mostly held in Basque, or the Casa Amaziga de Catalunya (for Catalan-Tamazight cooperation) that seems to operate in Catalan. Although this turns cooperation into another opportunity actually to use an EL, it may not be realistic for most EL activists to learn a second EL on top of their own. On the other hand, in some cases (such as Irish and Scottish Gaelic, or the Algonquian languages in Canada), the similarity between minority languages may make this task much easier.
We suggest: Prioritise cooperation where you have a shared language, even if this shared language has to be the dominant language.
Success in Language Revitalisation
It seems that EL communities that are relatively successful in revitalising their language are those most likely to be found engaging in cooperation (e.g. Māori and Basque). Naturally, these are the communities that others want to engage with, in order to learn from their experience. There are other communities with reportedly successful experiences, such as the Mohawk community in Kahnawà:ke, Quebec, but we do not know enough about cooperation in these contexts to comment.
We suggest: We agree that there is much to learn from ‘success stories’, and recommend looking for these; they are not all well known, and you will likely have to visit the area yourself to decide how successful revitalisation is. At the same time, there is much to learn from less successful experiences, and this may help you avoid falling into the same traps.
Degree of Language Endangerment/Revitalisation
It seems that cooperation has happened most often between EL communities that have similar levels of language endangerment which are generally quite low levels by global standards. For example, there is a similar situation in Wales and the Basque Country, with around three million inhabitants and 700,000 speakers of the minority language in both cases, strong institutional support, well-developed bilingual education, and widespread opportunities to learn the language as a second language.
We suggest: EL communities facing similar levels of language endangerment are more likely to be able to help each other, so we would generally advise collaborating with such communities.
However, this is not always the case. A good example is Professor Ghil’ad Zuckermann’s contribution to Aboriginal Australian language revitalisation, in which he draws lessons from the Hebrew experience, the revitalisation of Hebrew being perhaps the most successful case of language revitalisation in human history, while Australian languages are among the world’s most endangered. There are some lessons to be learnt about language revitalisation that have little to do with the level of endangerment, for example, recognising that influence from the dominant language(s) on the ‘revitalised’ language is inevitable.
Other Shared Projects and Interests
Besides a shared degree of language endangerment/revitalisation, EL communities may have other shared interests. Both Corsican and some Guernesiais activists advocate using writing systems with multiple norms; both Asturians and Yucatec Mayas want their state to declare their languages official; there are issues with both Inuktitut and Cree languages in choosing between the Latin alphabet and Canadian aboriginal syllabics; and both Inuit and Welsh activists are concerned with regional autonomy in connection to language policy.
We suggest: Look for specific shared interests within your general interest in language revitalisation. Being specific about these interests and starting with specific questions may help both communities to support each other more efficiently.
Other Cultural Factors
Besides the shared experience of oppression by a particular power, and besides sharing a common language, two EL communities may have other cultural features that ease, or complicate, cooperation and communication. For example, although there is a shared history of Spanish and Spanish-language colonisation in Chile and Colombia, there are significant cultural differences between the two countries which may create challenges in communication between Indigenous groups from each country. Conversely two EL communities may find communication easy despite not sharing much history.
We suggest: These other cultural factors are rather hard to define or anticipate, so we can only suggest being aware that they may arise, perhaps unexpectedly.
Resources Available
Resources are a deciding factor in being able to engage in communication and cooperation. Travelling, accommodation, material resources, taking time off paid work, delivery costs, and so on require a certain economic position. EL communities from Europe are greatly over-represented in this chapter because of their economically privileged position relative to other EL communities.
We suggest: It is important to evaluate realistically the resources you have available to engage in communication and cooperation. Moreover, we believe that it is an ethical responsibility for EL communities with greater resources to cooperate with less well-resourced communities, especially since these well-resourced communities in Europe were also implicated in the colonisation that led to language endangerment in the Americas and elsewhere (think of the Basque role in the colonisation of Latin America, or the Scottish in Canada). These well-resourced communities, who benefit from the educational systems of European states and are close to global centres of language-related research, also tend to have access to precisely the resources that less-resourced communities want, such as expertise in second-language teaching/learning or language documentation.
Globalisation and ‘Connectedness’
Some EL communities are more present than others on the Internet and at events related to language revitalisation, and it is these better-connected communities that seem to be the most likely to engage with other EL communities. The best-connected communities also tend to be the communities that are best-off economically, although the correlation isn’t perfect. For example, Mapuche language activists are probably some of the best connected within South America. These well-connected EL communities may already serve as regional ‘hubs’ for language revitalisation activity to some extent.
We suggest: Take advantage of any such ‘hubs’. For example, for a non-Mapuche language activist in Chile it may make sense to connect with Mapuche language activists first, in order them to connect with other EL communities, simply because Mapuche activists in Chile are well connected to the ‘wider world’ of language revitalisation.
Some international funding bodies actively encourage EL communities to engage in cooperation, as is the case with the SMiLE funding scheme. In fact, some of the projects that have previously been awarded SMiLE funding involve cooperation between communities, and this was encouraged in the call for applications.
Final Thoughts
In writing this chapter we have aimed to (1) create awareness of cooperation for language revitalisation, a phenomenon that has received little attention within the field of language revitalisation; (2) argue for the benefits it can bring to language revitalisation; and (3) suggest factors that make cooperation and communication easier and more productive.
We hope that this inspires EL speakers/learners/activists who are not yet involved in cooperation to think about the possibility. In particular, we are thinking of cases that offer good opportunities for cooperation that have not yet been taken up. For example, there is an inspiring story to tell regarding the revitalisation of French in Quebec. Quebecois language activists would have relative economic freedom resources to pursue such initiatives; and Quebecois of European descent share a common language (French) with Indigenous people in Quebec itself, as well as French Guyana, and French-speaking Africa. Yet we know of no initiatives to share that experience with other groups facing language endangerment (although we would be very happy to be corrected on this).
In our experience cooperation and communication are possible for any member of an EL community who has the opportunity and motivation to contact members of another. One author, himself a speaker of a minority language, was in contact with members of other EL communities even before working and doing research in the field.
Similarly, we hope that this chapter also provides encouragement to those few who are already engaged in such cooperation, as we believe they are doing invaluable work. We also hope to bring the world of language revitalisation a little closer to a global conversation about cooperation, or solidarity, between peoples or social groups suffering oppression and discrimination. We believe that this, too, is essential to avoid any tendency to ethnocentricity (‘I want to speak my language but those immigrants should stop speaking theirs!’) and for ensuring the ethical foundations of language revitalisation as a field of thought and action.
12.1 Networking and Collaboration between Speakers
The Instituto de docencia e investigación etnológica de Zacatecas (IDIEZ, see Capsule 8.5) held its first interdialectical encounter in 2011. We invited about twenty native speakers representing ten different variants of Nahuatl, as well as a few non-native speakers who had attained fluency, to participate in a five-day workshop.
There were three goals:
(1) allow speakers from different regions to experience the monolingual space we had been developing at IDIEZ;
(2) test the commonly held belief that the many variants of Nahuatl were mutually unintelligible;
(3) open a forum for speakers from different regions to share their experiences, thus breaking down the barriers of geographical distance that had prevented this in the past.
We began our activities by issuing two rules for participation in the workshop: first, everyone must speak in their own variant of Nahuatl, with no use of Spanish; and second, no fighting over contentious topics such as orthographic standardisation (see Chapter 14). We then proceeded, in Nahuatl, to propose, discuss and set the topics that would be covered during the five days. This was especially important, because in the past, meetings of speakers of Indigenous languages in Mexico had always been held in Spanish, and organised by government institutions that determined the topics of discussion beforehand.
We got off to a rocky start. The participants were not accustomed to using their language outside of their homes and communities. And those who were, had learned that this needed to be immediately followed by a translation into Spanish. Words, expressions and structures specific to the variant of one person were met by laughter and puzzlement on the part of those who spoke different variants. But in a very short period of time everyone adapted to the monolingual but multi-variant space. Spontaneous conversations sprang up, comparing and contrasting ways of expressing different things in each variant. And most importantly, the mutual intelligibility between variants was high enough to permit five days of animated, monolingual discussion on a wide range of topics, including identity, revitalisation, rituals and local festivals, ways of greeting, education, immigration, grammatical terminology, linguistic policy, intergenerational language transmission, and gender issues.
We have continued with the encounters, always experimenting with new formats and content. In 2017, for example, the Engaged Humanities project of the University of Warsaw, SOAS and Leiden University, along with Indigenous activists, invited native speakers of Nahuatl to participate in a revitalisation field school held in San Miguel Xaltipan, Tlaxcala, working alongside revitalisers of endangered languages from all over the world. The concluding activity was a monolingual academic conference in which speakers of many variants of Nahuatl gave papers on their current projects in curriculum development, teaching methodology, scientific research, revitalisation and art. Engaged discussion followed each talk and performance (see also Capsule 1.4).
The interdialectical encounter is an important way of getting native speakers of different variants of endangered languages who are geographically isolated from each other together to share problems and experiences, exchange ideas, and plan collective projects. We will begin experimenting with videoconferencing technology in order to reduce the cost and increase the frequency and coverage of these encounters.
Finally, oral speech is not the only vehicle for communication among speakers of Nahuatl variants. Writing in all of its manifestations (artistic, academic, personal and commercial genres, social media, etc.) is an important tool for linguistic interaction. However, in order for this to work with maximum efficiency in the Nahuatl context, IDIEZ promotes orthographic standardisation based on the aspect of the language that unifies its variants, morphology rather than sounds, which differ not only from variant to variant, but often from village to village and town to town.
12.2 The Engaged Humanities Project and Networking for Language Revitalisation
Networking opportunities can emerge from large-scale projects that cross boundaries between academia and communities. An example is our Engaged Humanities (ENGHUM) project funded by the European Commission within Horizon 2020 in 2016–2018. It was carried out by a consortium from the University of Warsaw, SOAS University of London, and Leiden University, with direct participation by speakers of many Indigenous and minority languages. We organised and carried out together a number of practically oriented activities: summer schools, field schools and field stays, workshops and cultural and dissemination events (see Figure 12.2.1). They provided networking between representatives of ethnic minorities from Poland (speakers of Wymysiöeryś, Lemko, Kashubian, Silesian and Masurian), other parts of Europe (speakers of Guernesiais, Sámi, Sylheti, Manx, Catalan, Greko, Euskara/Basque) and from Latin America (Makushi, Mixtec, Ayuuk, Pipil/Nawat), Asia (Buryat, Uruk, Tai, Zaiwa) and Africa (Ịzọn).
Figure 12.2.1 Mixtec, Ayuuk, and Nahua activists at the field school of the Engaged Humanities project, Mexico.
A good example of intense networking and mutual learning was our 2016 Field School in Wilamowice. It involved a meeting of activists, scholars, experts, and users of almost twenty minority languages and nonstandard linguistic varieties from all over the world. Its forty-five participants came from fourteen countries on four continents. All of them became very engaged not only in joint activities focusing on fieldwork, developing teaching materials for a local community or creating a project for a local museum, but they also participated in the social life of Wilamowice. They carried out a series of workshops for a local school, investigated local language attitudes, and focused on their own languages, cultures, or writing systems and visited local senior citizens’ houses. The empowerment resulting from this intense cross-cultural and multilingual networking was deeply felt both by visitors and – also in the long term – by the local community struggling to revitalise its language.
A similar idea guided our Field School in San Miguel Xaltipan (Tlaxcala, Mexico) in 2017. This two-week event was organised in a Nahuatl-speaking zone and participants included speakers of various variants of the Nahuatl language. Nahuatl was also one of the working languages throughout the Field School alongside Spanish. Speakers of other Indigenous languages of Mexico, including Yucatec Maya, Ayuuk and Mixtec, were also among participants. Also gathered in San Miguel Xaltipan were a number of scholars working on language documentation and language revitalisation, as well as language activists from Catalonia, El Salvador, Italy, Mexico, Poland, United Kingdom and USA (see Figure 12.2.2). Our activities included workshops on language documentation techniques and tools, creation of teaching materials and practical fieldwork training in, with, and for collaborating communities. The field school was also an opportunity for the exchange of experiences and making valuable contacts with fellow language activists working in language revitalisation in other parts of the world.
Figure 12.2.2 Justyna Majerska-Sznajder and Tymoteusz Król, revitalisers of Wymysiöeryś, greeted by a speaker of Nahuatl. San Miguel Tenango, Mexico.
Thus, intense networking among speakers of endangered languages from communities all over the world was one of the most important and enduring outcomes of the project. Bringing people together and stimulating the exchange of experiences and ideas has helped create long-lasting links and ‘communities of practice’ that are crucial for language revitalisation initiatives.
We have made some documentaries about our ENGHUM field schools which are available to view online:
‘Amo miquiz totlahtol. Our language will not die’: https://youtu.be/xSp4AMiOIWU
Field school in Wilamowice: www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yveONt5kuM
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