Christina Bratt Paulston

Catalan and Occitan: comparative test cases for a theory of language maintenance and shift

Thus, by judiciously contrasting gioups, socio-cultural processes and types of contact situations (not necessarily taken two at a time, if higher level interaction designs prove to be feasible) it should become possible to more meaningfully apportion the variance in language maintenance or language shift outcomes. Furthermore, the greater our insight with respect to sociocultural processes and the more appropriate our typology of intergroup contact situations, the more possible it becomes to meaningfully assemble and analyze language maintenance and language shift fües. Such files woüld permit both cross-cultural and diachronic analysis, of primary äs welll äs of secondary data, based upon comparable data, collected and organized in accord with uniform sets of socio-cultural processes and contact categories. This state of affairs is still far off but it is the goal toward which we might attempt to move within this second topical subdivision of the study of language maintenance and language shift, once more basic methodological and conceptual questions reach a somewhat more advanced level of clarification. Fishman 1971: 330

Language regenesis: A conceptual overview of language revival, revitalisation and reversal

With the purpose to facilitate general agreement over what constitutes language revival, we argue in this paper that language revival, language revitalisation, and language reversal constitute three separate phenomena, subsumed under the concept of language regenesis. We define and illustrate language regenesis and its subcategories with the intent of establishing a clear and common terminology for these concepts and we do this through a comparison of case studies.

Language-in-Education Policy and Planning

This chapter provides a descriptive review of research on language-ineducation policy and planning. We intend no theoretical generalizations but rather a descriptive summary of present research (1990–1993). With various interpretations of language-in-education policy available in the literature, it is first necessary to establish the perspective which guides this review. Ingram (1990), for example, confines language-in-education to second or foreign language teaching and learning although he mentions literacy and bilingual education as topics in language-in-education.

Some Thoughts on Extrinsic Linguistic Minorities.

This paper defines and provides examples of a category of linguistic minorities that we call extrinsic minorities. Three case studies are summarised to illustrate the spectrum of linguistic heterogeneity of extrinsic minorities, and the linguistic consequences. These cases show a continuum of how they fit into our definition of extrinsic minorities: Russians in Latvia are the most prototypical; Hungarians in Transylvania are less prototypical; while Slovenes in Austria reflect the least prototypical case. One main conclusion is that the norm amongst extrinsic minorities is language maintenance with very slow shift, if at all. We conclude by identifying several social factors that contribute to the linguistic course of extrinsic minorities.

Understanding Educational Policies in Multilingual States

The main linguistic outcomes of the prolonged contact of ethnic groups within a modern nation-state are language maintenance, bilingualism, or language shift. This article explores the social variables germane to language maintenance and shift in ethnic-group relations. An understanding of language maintenance and shift and the social conditions under which they occur is prerequisite to establishing or evaluating educational language policies that seek to regulate the interactions of ethnic groups within a nation-state. A language policy that goes counter to existing sociocultural forces is not likely to be successful.

Language as commodity: global structures, local marketplaces

Language as commodity: global structures, local marketplaces, by Peter Tan and Rani Rubdy, London and New York, Continuum, 2008, xiv + 228 pp., 75.00/US

Language in South Africa

150.00 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-8470-6422-6, 2...

Understanding Second Language Educational Policies in Multilingual Settings

Rajend Mesthrie (ed.), Language in South Africa . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002. Pp. xvii, 485. HB

Teaching English as a Second Language. Techniques and Procedures.

75.00. Language in South Africa (LinSA) is a very handsome book, beautifully edited, carefully proofread, and produced on thick paper in elegant fonts. It is in fact the same book, although revised and updated, as Language and social history: Studies in South African sociolinguistics ( Mesthrie 1995 ). Just looking at the two volumes, side by side on my desk, I could write an essay on publishing and face validity. I am happy that this book has found an international publisher, because it deserves wider reading and better promotion (I never saw the first book reviewed or promoted), but the easy conclusion that the book under review is a better book is not necessarily warranted. As the Irish say about their horses, handsome is as handsome does, and both volumes do handsomely indeed.

Linguistic minorities in multilingual settings

The three main concepts in this entry,’ second languages’, ‘educational policies’, and ‘multilingual settings’, can be given various meanings, so a delimitation of terms is called for.