Discussion Details
| Title: | Prestige and Language Maintenance |
| Submitter: | Stan Anonby |
| Description: | I'd like to comment on a posting on Dec 14th, a review of Batibo's book
''Language Decline and Death in Africa''. Batibo says, ''As long as speakers see some social status or socio-economic value in their languages, they will certainly wish to maintain them.'' I'd like to address the idea that social status helps maintain languages. While this may be true in places like Africa and Europe, it doesn't seem to be so in the Americas. I have surveyed various indigenous languages in Canada and Brazil, and in fact, the opposite seems to be true. The individuals with lowest social status usually are the people who speak their the indigenous language the best. The villages with the lowest prestige are more often than not the ones in which the language is spoken most vigorously. The tribes which retain their language the longest are usually the ones with the lowest social standing. The opposite is also true. The higher prestige individuals, villages, and tribes are the ones who shift more quickly to the language of wider communication. Why? Maybe the lower status folks avoid contact with the majority culture out of shame. Possibly higher status gives people more confidence to interact with the members of the majority culture. This facilitates language learning and cross-cultural marriages. I think part of the answer may also lie in the size of the group. Maybe the statement that prestige helps maintain languages is true for Africa because the languages there are of roughly the same size and status. The languages I'm thinking of in the Americas are drops in the bucket compared to super languages like English, French and Portuguese. If you have a language that is as big as Catalan, say, the statement is probably true as well. Even though Catalan is small compared to Castilian, it is large enough that prestige can help maintain it. However, in languages as vulnerable as in the Americas, it isn't that simple. You can't just assume that prestige will help maintain the language. Maybe it is because they just don't have the critical mass relative to the language of wider communication. I'd welcome any comments. |
| Date Posted: | 13-Jan-2006 |
| Linguistic Field(s): | Anthropological Linguistics |
| LL Issue: | 17.100 |
| Posted: | 13-Jan-2006 |
