Abstract Societal multilingualism and multilectalism have been among the leading justifications for language policies, especially in the Global South, where many of these have failed. I associate the failures with poor choices of official languages and media of education, which are not consistent with the linguistic behaviors of the majority of the citizenry and the socioeconomic structures of the relevant polities. I review some cases of adequate and inadequate policies around the world and explain ecologically some reasons for either their successes or their failures. In a subset of the cases, I assess the results as mixed. My recommendation is of course not to follow the policy of a particular polity simply because it has succeeded there but to also check whether the ecology of its success is similar to that of the new polity. The relevant ecology includes the socioeconomic structure/system and the linguistic practices of the citizenry for whom the policy is intended. Among the issues to address is, for instance, whether the language adopted as the official language and medium of education is easy for the majority of the citizenry to learn successfully. Another is whether the language policy will make the economic development of the nation more inclusive and empower the majority economically and politically.
{"title":"Sound language policies must be consistent with natural language evolution","authors":"S. Mufwene","doi":"10.1515/ijsl-2022-0084","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2022-0084","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Societal multilingualism and multilectalism have been among the leading justifications for language policies, especially in the Global South, where many of these have failed. I associate the failures with poor choices of official languages and media of education, which are not consistent with the linguistic behaviors of the majority of the citizenry and the socioeconomic structures of the relevant polities. I review some cases of adequate and inadequate policies around the world and explain ecologically some reasons for either their successes or their failures. In a subset of the cases, I assess the results as mixed. My recommendation is of course not to follow the policy of a particular polity simply because it has succeeded there but to also check whether the ecology of its success is similar to that of the new polity. The relevant ecology includes the socioeconomic structure/system and the linguistic practices of the citizenry for whom the policy is intended. Among the issues to address is, for instance, whether the language adopted as the official language and medium of education is easy for the majority of the citizenry to learn successfully. Another is whether the language policy will make the economic development of the nation more inclusive and empower the majority economically and politically.","PeriodicalId":52428,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of the Sociology of Language","volume":"2023 1","pages":"1 - 22"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49190684","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"El quechua, la política y las políticas públicas: comentarios iniciales","authors":"Luis Enrique López","doi":"10.1515/ijsl-2022-0109","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2022-0109","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52428,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of the Sociology of Language","volume":"2023 1","pages":"13 - 25"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46085758","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Bringing the language forward: engagements with Quechua language planning and policy","authors":"Frances Kvietok, N. Hornberger","doi":"10.1515/ijsl-2022-0017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2022-0017","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52428,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of the Sociology of Language","volume":"2023 1","pages":"1 - 12"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44317817","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Resumen Durante los últimos 30 años, Ecuador ha visto transformaciones importantes con respecto a las políticas relacionadas con las lenguas indígenas en el país. Por otra parte, estudiosos extranjeros y locales han llevado a cabo numerosas investigaciones lingüísticas y antropológicas sobre varias de las lenguas indígenas habladas en el país; sin embargo, estas han tenido bajo o ningún impacto en el mantenimiento de las lenguas, las mismas que muestran una tendencia persistente al desplazamiento. Enmarcado en prácticas de documentación activa-revitalización, este artículo se propone mostrar brevemente las tendencias de desplazamiento del kichwa en Ecuador, ilustrar y analizar procesos de investigación que basados en el quehacer colaborativo entre hablantes y no hablantes, pasan de ser una documentación que beneficia exclusivamente a la comunidad científica lingüística, para centrarse en los hablantes como los primeros agentes-beneficiarios de procesos revitalizadores; y describir algunas de las estrategias de revitalización que emergen de activistas kichwahablantes. Finalmente, reflexionaré brevemente sobre las metodologías utilizadas y la necesidad de avanzar hacia verdaderas prácticas de interculturalidad basadas en interrelaciones más equitativas que lleguen a impactar en los niveles micro, meso y macro.
{"title":"Desde la documentación activa a la revitalización contextualizada: experiencias con comunidades kichwahablantes en Ecuador","authors":"Marleen Haboud Bumachar","doi":"10.1515/ijsl-2022-0043","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2022-0043","url":null,"abstract":"Resumen Durante los últimos 30 años, Ecuador ha visto transformaciones importantes con respecto a las políticas relacionadas con las lenguas indígenas en el país. Por otra parte, estudiosos extranjeros y locales han llevado a cabo numerosas investigaciones lingüísticas y antropológicas sobre varias de las lenguas indígenas habladas en el país; sin embargo, estas han tenido bajo o ningún impacto en el mantenimiento de las lenguas, las mismas que muestran una tendencia persistente al desplazamiento. Enmarcado en prácticas de documentación activa-revitalización, este artículo se propone mostrar brevemente las tendencias de desplazamiento del kichwa en Ecuador, ilustrar y analizar procesos de investigación que basados en el quehacer colaborativo entre hablantes y no hablantes, pasan de ser una documentación que beneficia exclusivamente a la comunidad científica lingüística, para centrarse en los hablantes como los primeros agentes-beneficiarios de procesos revitalizadores; y describir algunas de las estrategias de revitalización que emergen de activistas kichwahablantes. Finalmente, reflexionaré brevemente sobre las metodologías utilizadas y la necesidad de avanzar hacia verdaderas prácticas de interculturalidad basadas en interrelaciones más equitativas que lleguen a impactar en los niveles micro, meso y macro.","PeriodicalId":52428,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of the Sociology of Language","volume":"2023 1","pages":"91 - 134"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46611998","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract In this paper, I draw on the ethnography of language planning and policy to consider how urban Indigenous language education might benefit from understanding the meanings and processes behind other language planning and policy activities migrant youth participate in, specifically, family language policymaking activities. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews conducted in the region of Cusco, Perú I examine the experiences of two youth from rural hometowns and of their families. My analysis discusses how family language policies influenced youth’s shifting repertoires towards and away from Quechua, how youth drew on their Quechua–Spanish bilingualism to act as family language policy agents guided by local crianza and raciolinguistic ideologies, and how youth experienced Quechua language education in urban high schools. I argue that urban Quechua education efforts need to consider how migrant youth experience and shape their bilingualism and that of their families across rural-urban continua in order to craft safe and meaningful spaces where youth can participate in the strengthening of their Quechua language practices and identities.
{"title":"Migrant bilingual youth, family, and school language policy: ethnographic insights for urban Quechua education","authors":"Frances Kvietok","doi":"10.1515/ijsl-2022-0016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2022-0016","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this paper, I draw on the ethnography of language planning and policy to consider how urban Indigenous language education might benefit from understanding the meanings and processes behind other language planning and policy activities migrant youth participate in, specifically, family language policymaking activities. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews conducted in the region of Cusco, Perú I examine the experiences of two youth from rural hometowns and of their families. My analysis discusses how family language policies influenced youth’s shifting repertoires towards and away from Quechua, how youth drew on their Quechua–Spanish bilingualism to act as family language policy agents guided by local crianza and raciolinguistic ideologies, and how youth experienced Quechua language education in urban high schools. I argue that urban Quechua education efforts need to consider how migrant youth experience and shape their bilingualism and that of their families across rural-urban continua in order to craft safe and meaningful spaces where youth can participate in the strengthening of their Quechua language practices and identities.","PeriodicalId":52428,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of the Sociology of Language","volume":"2023 1","pages":"143 - 166"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45627318","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Over the last two decades, the United States has increasingly become a site of Quechua language use and reclamation. Reclamation programs have emerged, both promoting the language and fostering community empowerment, particularly among Latinx youth. In this essay, we draw on our experiences as U.S.-based Quechua-language educators and organizers to explore the participation of diasporic Quechua reclamation movements in the global advance of the language. We frame these U.S.-based projects not as discrete entities, but as initiatives in constant connection with their counterparts in the Andes. This reflection piece provides a timeline of academic and community organizations in New York City, a global urban center with one of the largest bilingual Quechua-Spanish communities outside of the Andes. We conclude that these diasporic bottom-up language policy and planning (LPP) efforts are natural agents of dialogue on Quechua-language education and an integral part of the international Quechua reclamation movement.
{"title":"Hemispheric Quechua: language education and reclamation within diasporic communities in the United States","authors":"Américo Mendoza-Mori, Rachel Sprouse","doi":"10.1515/ijsl-2022-0024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2022-0024","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Over the last two decades, the United States has increasingly become a site of Quechua language use and reclamation. Reclamation programs have emerged, both promoting the language and fostering community empowerment, particularly among Latinx youth. In this essay, we draw on our experiences as U.S.-based Quechua-language educators and organizers to explore the participation of diasporic Quechua reclamation movements in the global advance of the language. We frame these U.S.-based projects not as discrete entities, but as initiatives in constant connection with their counterparts in the Andes. This reflection piece provides a timeline of academic and community organizations in New York City, a global urban center with one of the largest bilingual Quechua-Spanish communities outside of the Andes. We conclude that these diasporic bottom-up language policy and planning (LPP) efforts are natural agents of dialogue on Quechua-language education and an integral part of the international Quechua reclamation movement.","PeriodicalId":52428,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of the Sociology of Language","volume":"2023 1","pages":"135 - 142"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42122123","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1515/ijsl-2023-frontmatter280
{"title":"Frontmatter","authors":"","doi":"10.1515/ijsl-2023-frontmatter280","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2023-frontmatter280","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52428,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of the Sociology of Language","volume":"76 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134948750","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Can schools revitalize Indigenous languages? Some updates","authors":"Nicholas Limerick","doi":"10.1515/ijsl-2022-0112","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2022-0112","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52428,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of the Sociology of Language","volume":"2023 1","pages":"167 - 170"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45916577","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Framed within a critical and ethnographic approach to language policy, my study addresses the phenomenon of language commodification and the construction of neoliberal subjectivities in contemporary Perú. Specifically, I address a project of Quechua teaching in the city of Lima called Quechua para Todos, or Quechua for All, promoted by young Quechua activists developing interventions to change historically established imaginaries. Taking this project as a starting point, I analyze what is behind the extremely high demand these Quechua courses are having among youth in the capital city, where Quechua has been historically silenced. My argument is that a significant group of the young students from the courses have begun to integrate the Quechua language to the figure of the entrepreneurial subject for whom both personal and national branding is central. While speaking Quechua has historically indexed ‘indianness’ linked to backwardness, rurality, ancestrality and ignorance, it is now being associated with other linguistic and non-linguistic signs (such as being a professional and knowing English) to enregister a multicultural citizenship within a context of neoliberal economic growth and state policies of cultural branding. Although the demand to study Quechua in Lima is shifting the meanings and values of Quechua, at least within a domain of speakers, it may also be erasing ongoing processes of racialization of indigenous peoples in Peruvian society and fundamental gaps in access to education and economic resources.
摘要在语言政策的批判性和民族志方法的框架内,我的研究探讨了语言商品化现象和当代秘鲁新自由主义主观主义的建构。具体来说,我在利马市谈到了一个名为Quechua para Todos或Quechua for All的Quechua教学项目,该项目由年轻的奎丘亚活动家推动,他们正在制定干预措施,以改变历史上既定的想象。以这个项目为起点,我分析了这些奎丘亚课程在首都青年中的极高需求背后的原因,奎丘亚在历史上一直处于沉默状态。我的论点是,这些课程中的一大批年轻学生已经开始将克丘亚语融入创业主题中,对他们来说,个人和国家品牌都是核心。虽然说克丘亚语在历史上曾将“独立性”与落后、乡村、祖先和无知联系在一起,但现在它正与其他语言和非语言标志(如专业人士和懂英语)联系在一起以在新自由主义经济增长和国家文化品牌政策的背景下注册多元文化公民身份。尽管在利马学习克丘亚语的需求正在改变克丘亚的含义和价值观,至少在发言者的范围内是这样,但它也可能消除秘鲁社会中土著人民正在进行的种族化进程,以及在获得教育和经济资源方面的根本差距。
{"title":"Youth, Quechua and neoliberalism in contemporary Perú","authors":"Virginia Zavala","doi":"10.1515/ijsl-2022-0020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2022-0020","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Framed within a critical and ethnographic approach to language policy, my study addresses the phenomenon of language commodification and the construction of neoliberal subjectivities in contemporary Perú. Specifically, I address a project of Quechua teaching in the city of Lima called Quechua para Todos, or Quechua for All, promoted by young Quechua activists developing interventions to change historically established imaginaries. Taking this project as a starting point, I analyze what is behind the extremely high demand these Quechua courses are having among youth in the capital city, where Quechua has been historically silenced. My argument is that a significant group of the young students from the courses have begun to integrate the Quechua language to the figure of the entrepreneurial subject for whom both personal and national branding is central. While speaking Quechua has historically indexed ‘indianness’ linked to backwardness, rurality, ancestrality and ignorance, it is now being associated with other linguistic and non-linguistic signs (such as being a professional and knowing English) to enregister a multicultural citizenship within a context of neoliberal economic growth and state policies of cultural branding. Although the demand to study Quechua in Lima is shifting the meanings and values of Quechua, at least within a domain of speakers, it may also be erasing ongoing processes of racialization of indigenous peoples in Peruvian society and fundamental gaps in access to education and economic resources.","PeriodicalId":52428,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of the Sociology of Language","volume":"2023 1","pages":"45 - 66"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45139672","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}