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Linguistic Diversity: Basic Concepts and Implications for Reading Research
Abstract
The majority of the world’s children grow up and receive education in multilingual societies, many being first introduced to literacy in a second language. Most reading science research, however, does not address the influence of linguistic diversity on literacy acquisition and tacitly assumes a scenario in which children learn to read in their mother tongue, spoken in a linguistically homogeneous community. We discuss some of the key issues regarding linguistic diversity, its effects on literacy acquisition and the challenges linguistically diverse societies experience in meeting the educational needs of their people. We use global adult literacy rates to explore the relationship between linguistic diversity and literacy by examining respective contributions of a country’s Language Diversity Index and its economic wealth (GNI per Capita) to its literacy rate. The results reveal significant independent contributions by both factors. We discuss the implications of these issues for literacy research.KeywordsMultilingual societiesLinguistic diversityLiteracy acquisition
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The present study was designed to evaluate whether the complexity of Arabic orthography increases its perceptual load, thus slowing word identification. Adolescent Arabic speakers who mastered Hebrew as a second language completed oral and visual versions of the Trail Making Test (TMT; J. E. Parington & R. G. Lieter, 1949) in both languages. Oral TMT required declaiming consecutive numbers or alternation between numbers and letters. Visual TMT required connecting Arabic or Indian numbers and alternation between letters and numbers. Performance in Hebrew and Arabic oral TMT did not differ. Performance was significantly slower in Arabic visual TMT. These results indicate that Arabic speakers process Arabic orthography (1st language) slower than Hebrew orthography (2nd language) and suggest that this is due to the complexity of Arabic orthography.
The Indian subcontinent constitutes a highly diverse linguistic area, with over 750 languages belonging to nine language families. A large proportion of these languages are endangered. Multilingualism and language-in-education policies and practices in the subcontinent are affected by a hierarchical relationship of languages characterized by a double divide – one between English and the major national/regional languages and the other between the major languages and the Indigenous tribal minority (ITM) ones. The declared language policies in the subcontinent emphasize languages of national identity and development of ITM languages. In practice, however, English is the most dominant language promoted along with the major national/regional languages, while the ITM languages are neglected. Languages in education reflect the linguistic double divide; private schools are English-medium schools, and public schools are in the medium of the dominant regional languages with English becoming increasingly important in the higher levels of education. Submersion education in the dominant language leads to educational failure of the ITM children. Some countries, such as Nepal and India, have started experimental programs of MT-based multilingual education (MLE) to deal with the problems of classroom language barriers. But the burden of the double divide seems to force early exit from the use of MT in MLE programs limiting the scope for development of MT and its egalitarian positioning in the society.
Even though Sinitic languages are spoken by more than one billion people, very little research has been carried out on the synchronic grammar of major languages and dialect groups of Chinese, apart from standard Mandarin or pǔtōnghuà 普通话, and Cantonese to a lesser extent. The same situation applies to the diachrony of Sinitic languages with respect to the exact relationship between Archaic and Medieval Chinese and contemporary dialects.
Since diachronic and historical research reveal important insights into earlier stages of grammar and morphology, they cannot but form a crucial link with synchronic studies: First, it can be expected that different kinds of archaic and medieval features are potentially preserved in certain of the more conservative dialect groups of Sinitic. Second, clues to the pathways of grammaticalization and semantic change can only be clearly delineated with reference to precise analyses of earlier stages of the Chinese language. These are two decisive factors in employing both approaches to syntactic research in the one analysis. Indeed, the main motivation behind compiling this volume of studies on the grammar of Sinitic languages (or Chinese dialects) is to highlight the work of linguists who use the two intertwined perspectives of synchrony and diachrony in their research.
A corollary of this first view, espoused in this anthology either explicitly or implicitly, is that if only standard Mandarin grammar is analysed, then such connections between the diachronic and the synchronic state may often be overlooked. This could simply be due to Mandarin innovating where other dialect groups have remained more conservative in their retention of features of Archaic and Medieval Chinese. This possibility has been pointed out in seminal studies by Hashimoto on Hakka (1973, 1992) and shown to be the case for various features of grammar in Southern Min by Y.-C. Li (1986) on aspect and negation, Mei and Yang (1995) on chronological strata in Min, not to mention in the research of scholars such as Zhu Dexi (1990) and Anne Yue-Hashimoto (1991b, 1993a,b) on Southern Sinitic syntactic typology, particularly interrogative structures. The same phenomenon for morphosyntax has been described for Min passive and comitative markers in Chappell (forthcoming (a)), which resembles Late Medieval Chinese more closely than Mandarin where grammatical renovation has occurred. It will be seen that the studies in this volume effectively meld these two approaches of synchrony and diachrony.
Features of Indian multilingualism are discussed to show that, despite several positive forces favoring maintenance of minority languages, languages are subjected to inequality and discrimination. It is argued that multilingualism in India, as in other South Asian countries, is hierarchical in nature, characterized by a double divide - one between the elitist language of power and the major regional languages (vernaculars) and, the other, between the regional languages and the dominated ones. The nature and implications of this double divide are analyzed in respect of the relative positions of English, Hindi, regional majority languages and other indigenous/minority languages. The paper shows that, at the same time as hierarchical multilingualism has led to a general loss of linguistic diversity, the progressive domain shrinkage and the marginalization of the surviving indigenous and minority languages affect the dynamics of the relationship between languages and linguistic groups in contact and negotiation of linguistic identities. The chasm between policy and practice affecting the place of languages in society, it is argued, leads to educational failure, capability deprivation and poverty in the minority linguistic groups, particularly the tribal mother tongue speakers. Programs of multilingual education are briefly discussed in the context of recent attempts to deal with classroom language disadvantage of tribal children in India.
This paper argues that bilingual education in developing countries represents an encouraging facet of efforts to improve primary schooling both quantitatively in terms of participation and qualitatively in terms of learning processes. Public education in many multilingual nations still involves submersion in the ex-colonial language, which results in highly wasteful and inefficient systems. In contrast, use of the mother tongue in school provides a basis for students to learn subject disciplines and develop literacy skills upon which competency in the second or foreign language can be built. There are both positive and negative tendencies in the practice of bilingual education as exemplified by Guinea-Bissau, Niger and Mozambique in Africa and Bolivia in Latin America. Use of the mother tongue in primary schooling offers a number of documented benefits such as valorising the mother tongue, bridging the gap between home and school cultures, and raising student identity consciousness and self-esteem. Its academic potential is to produce students who are competently bilingual and biliterate. Experiences demonstrate that an important implication for researchers is to more thoroughly investigate quality indicators and less researched aspects such as gender. An implication for educational developers is to promote the use of more established bilingual models and methods.
In some language situations primary education in the mother tongue may not be desirable. A number of factors may militate against education in the mother tongue: (1) difficulty in determining the mother tongue. This is especially a problem in multilingual settings where children grow up with multiple mother tongues; (2) definition of 'a language'. Mother tongues may be deemed to be the standard variety; and (3) social and ethnic divisiveness of mother tongue education. In multilingual settings the maintenance of social cohesiveness may be of more importance than the benefitof mother-tongue education.Where patterns of language use are linked to social class, mother-tongue education could further diminish access to power structures by underprivileged groups. Ideological issues can be resolved only in the context of the particular social and political situation. There is no general rule that primary education should be in the mother tongue.
The ABLE project was started in 2003 at a school of mainly first language speakers of isiXhosa in the rural areas of the Eastern Cape, South Africa with the purpose of (i) assessing the long term effect of additive (late-exit transitional) bilingual curriculum delivery on language proficiency in isiXhosa and English, on the cognitive development and on the academic achievement of a group of rural isiXhosa-speaking learners, by comparing this group with learners in similar rural contexts who have experienced forms of subtractive bilingual education; (ii) describing what form additive bilingual curriculum delivery takes in practice in South Africa; and (iii) describing the effect this model has on teachers and learners, on the school itself and on the wider community connected to the school. This article presents the results of the first round of the quantitative comparative data. The results of a group of 11 learners in the experimental school are compared to the results of a group of 16 learners who are in a school where they are receiving instruction through the medium of only English since grade R. Evidence of the benefits of an additive model of curriculum delivery is starting to emerge. Limitations of the study are discussed.
This research examines the influence of bilingualism on third language learning in a bilingual community, the Basque Country. The English-language achievement of students instructed through the majority (Spanish) and the minority (Basque) languages in the Basque Country was measured. In addition, other cognitive, sociostructural, social psychological, and educational variables were also included in the study. Several sets of regression analyses were carried out to analyze the role of bilingual education. The results indicated that bilingualism and several other variables (intelligence, motivation, age, and exposure) were good predictors of English-language achievement. This research suggests, then, that immersion in the minority language for Spanish-speaking students and school reinforcement of the native language for Basque-speaking students have positive linguistic outcomes.
This article presents a synthesis of the sociolinguistic situation of what the authors refer to as the ‘contemporary dialects’ of French in the France of today. The introduction emphasises the methodological and conceptual problems attending any such definition and evaluation, attempting to clarify the complex situation and to identify the various kinds of ‘dialects’, ‘uses’ and ‘speakers’. We then concentrate on the regional ‘dialects’ of French in continental France, urban and rural, and summarise a series of important recent studies, concentrating on local variation. We also distinguish the sociolinguistic situations of the northern and the southern parts of the country. Even though France is known to be a highly centralised country, whose linguistic policy has been aiming at monolingualism for the past two centuries, the article offers some possibly surprising and nuanced results that show more variation than established opinion would generally admit about contemporary France.
The paper presents the language policy (arabisation) pursued in Algeria since independence in 1962. The first section of the
paper focuses on the recent changes in government language policy (return to Arabic–French bilingualism in schools) and reactions
to them following the recommendations made by the National Commission for the Reform of the Educational System in March 2001.
The second part gives a historical background to post-independent language-in-education planning. The third section looks
at the unplanned developments resulting from the hegemonic nature of linguistic arabisation. The fourth section explores secondary
school students’ attitudinal reactions towards Algeria’s linguistic pluralism. Finally, the paper argues that the Algerian
leadership’s refusal to recognise linguistic pluralism considered beneficial by the majority of the population represents
one of the major obstacles to the nation-building process.
As the world grows less biologically diverse, it is becoming less linguistically and culturally diverse as well. Biologists estimate annual loss of species at 1,000 times or more greater than historic rates, and linguists predict that 50-90% of the world's languages will disappear by the end of this century. Prior studies indicate similarities in the geographic arrangement of biological and linguistic diversity, although conclusions have often been constrained by use of data with limited spatial precision. Here we use greatly improved datasets to explore the co-occurrence of linguistic and biological diversity in regions containing many of the Earth's remaining species: biodiversity hotspots and high biodiversity wilderness areas. Results indicate that these regions often contain considerable linguistic diversity, accounting for 70% of all languages on Earth. Moreover, the languages involved are frequently unique (endemic) to particular regions, with many facing extinction. Likely reasons for co-occurrence of linguistic and biological diversity are complex and appear to vary among localities, although strong geographic concordance between biological and linguistic diversity in many areas argues for some form of functional connection. Languages in high biodiversity regions also often co-occur with one or more specific conservation priorities, here defined as endangered species and protected areas, marking particular localities important for maintaining both forms of diversity. The results reported in this article provide a starting point for focused research exploring the relationship between biological and linguistic-cultural diversity, and for developing integrated strategies designed to conserve species and languages in regions rich in both.
The benefits of bilingual education for a disadvantaged indigenous population as an investment in human capital are significant. Students of bilingual schools in Guatemala have higher attendance and promotion rates, and lower repetition and dropout rates. Bilingual students receive higher scores on all subject matters, including mastery of Spanish. The efficiency of bilingual education is confirmed by a crude cost–benefit exercise. A shift to bilingual schooling would result in considerable cost savings because of reduced repetition. The higher quality of education generating higher promotion rates will help students complete primary education and will substantially increase completion rates at low cost. The costs saving due to bilingual education is estimated at $5 million, equal to the cost of primary education for 100,000 students.
Studies have shown that bilingual individuals consistently outperform their monolingual counterparts on tasks involving executive control. The present paper reviews some of the evidence for this conclusion and relates the findings to the effect of bilingualism on cognitive organisation and to conceptual issues in the structure of executive control. Evidence for the protective effect of bilingualism against Alzheimer's disease is presented with some speculation about the reason for that protection.
Explaining cross-country differences in growth rates requires not only an understanding of the link between growth and public policies, but also an understanding of why countries choose different public policies. This paper shows that ethnic diversity helps explain cross-country differences in public policies and other economic indicators. In the case of Sub-Saharan Africa, economic growth is associated with low schooling, political instability, underdeveloped financial systems, distorted foreign exchange markets, high government deficits, and insufficient infrastructure. Africa's high ethnic fragmentation explains a significant part of most of these characteristics. Copyright 1997, the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The self-teaching hypothesis proposes that phonological recoding functions as a self-teaching mechanism enabling the learner to independently acquire an autonomous orthographic lexicon. Successful decoding encounters with novel letter strings provide opportunities to learn word-specific print-to-meaning connections. Although it may not play a central role in skilled word recognition, phonological recoding, by virtue of its self-teaching function, is regarded as critical to successful reading acquisition. This paper elaborates the self-teaching hypothesis proposed by Jorm and Share (1983), and reviews relevant evidence. Key features of phonological recoding include an item-based rather than stage-based role in development, the progressive "lexicalization" of the process of recoding, and the importance of phonological awareness and contextual information in resolving decoding ambiguity. Although phonological skills have been shown to be primary in reading acquisition, orthographic processing appears to be an important but secondary source of individual differences. This implies an asymmetrical pattern of dissociations in both developmental and acquired reading disorders. Strong relationships between word recognition, basic phonological processing abilities and phonemic awareness are also consistent with the self-teaching notion. Finally, it is noted that current models of word recognition (both PDP and dual-route) fail to address the quintessential problem of reading acquisition-independent generation of target pronunciations for novel orthographic strings.
The present study was designed to evaluate whether the complexity of Arabic orthography increases its perceptual load, thus slowing word identification. Adolescent Arabic speakers who mastered Hebrew as a second language completed oral and visual versions of the Trail Making Test (TMT; J. E. Parington & R. G. Lieter, 1949) in both languages. Oral TMT required declaiming consecutive numbers or alternation between numbers and letters. Visual TMT required connecting Arabic or Indian numbers and alternation between letters and numbers. Performance in Hebrew and Arabic oral TMT did not differ. Performance was significantly slower in Arabic visual TMT. These results indicate that Arabic speakers process Arabic orthography (1st language) slower than Hebrew orthography (2nd language) and suggest that this is due to the complexity of Arabic orthography.
The mother tongue of the absolute majority of native Arabic speakers is Spoken Arabic (SA), which is a local dialect that does not have a written form. For reading and writing, as well as for formal communication Literary Arabic (LA) is used For the literate Arabs, these two languages are extensively inter-twined in every day life. Consequently, it is possible that, despite the difference between them, LA is not processed like a regular second language by the cognitive system of the native Arabic speakers but rather as an enhancement of the spoken lexicon. In the present study we examined this possibility comparing semantic priming effects in auditory lexical decision within SA (L1), with the effects found across languages with LA or in Hebrew (L2). Hebrew is doubtlessly a second language for native Arabic speakers. In this study we have manipulated semantic priming In Experiment 1 the targets were in Spoken Arabic and the primes in any of the three languages. The semantic priming effect was twice as large within L1 as between languages and there was no difference between Hebrew and LA. In Experiment 2, all primes were in SA whereas the targets were in any of the three languages. The priming effects in that experiment were doubled relative to the previous experiment, but the inter-language relationships were the same. For both language pairings, the semantic priming was larger when the primes were presented in SA (and the targets in either Hebrew or LA) than when the primes were presented in one of the second languages and the targets in SA. The conclusion is that, despite the intensive daily use adult native Arabic speakers make of SA and LA, and despite their shared origin, the two languages retain their status as first and second languages in the cognitive system.
Explaining cross-country differences in growth rates requires not only an understanding of the link between growth and public
policies, but also an understanding of why countries choose different public policies. This paper shows that ethnic diversity
helps explain cross-country differences in public policies and other economic indicators. In the case of Sub-Saharan Africa,
economic growth is associated with low schooling, political instability, underdeveloped financial systems, distorted foreign
exchange markets, high government deficits, and insufficient infrastructure. Africa's high ethnic fragmentation explains a
significant part of most of these characteristics.
When first published in 1980, Dialectology broke new ground by integrating urban dialectology (sociolinguistics), dialect geography and spatial variation into a cohesive discipline. In this second edition, the authors take account of the renaissance of dialect research in the last twenty years. They offer new sections on dialectometry and mapping variability, a revised section on dialect geography as well as updates of other recent developments. A reliable textbook for over seventeen years, this new edition will continue to serve the needs of undergraduates and individual scholars with its comprehensive coverage of methods, models and findings in the study of language variation and change.
This text provides an introduction to the field of sociolinguistics for second and foreign language teachers. This book provides an introduction to the field of sociolinguistics for second and foreign language teachers. Chapters cover the basic areas of sociolinguistics, including regional and social variations in dialects, language and gender, World English, and intercultural communication. Each chapter has been specially written for this collection by an individual who has done extensive research on the topic explored. This is the first introductory text to address explicitly the pedagogical implications of current theory and research in sociolinguistics. The book will also be of interest to any teachers with students from linguistically diverse backgrounds.
Are you curious to know what all human languages have in common and in what ways they differ? Do you want to find out how language can be used to trace different peoples and their past? Then this book is for you! Now in its third edition, it guides beginners through the rich diversity of the world's languages. It presupposes no background in linguistics, and introduces the reader to linguistic concepts with the help of problem sets, end of chapter exercises and an extensive bibliography. Charts of language families provide geographical and genealogical information, and engaging sidebars with demographic, social, historical and geographical facts help to contextualise and bring languages to life. This edition includes a fully updated glossary of all linguistic terms used, new problem sets, and a new chapter on cartography. Supplementary online materials include links to all websites mentioned, and answers to the exercises for instructors.
This is a remarkably interesting and useful book…it makes a significant contribution to our knowledge and understanding of both bilingualism and education.' Journal of Education Policy.
The current study analyzes the relationship between elementary school reading achievement and participation in the following language acquisition programs—transitional bilingual, developmental, two-way bilingual immersion, and English immersion. With a focus on the achievement of Spanish-dominant English learners, the study uses multilevel models to examine Spanish and English reading outcomes for evidence of an “additive advantage” associated with programs that pursue full proficiency in students’ home language and English. Set in a large urban school district in Texas, this research finds that participants in the most additive program, two-way, earned the highest Grade 5 English reading performance. In contrast, students in transitional and two-way programs demonstrated similar Spanish reading growth, and developmental students had significantly slower growth than transitional students.
This book analyzes how the urban disadvantaged in the city of New Delhi learn English. Using qualitative methods the author discusses the pedagogy, texts and contexts in which biliteracy occurs and links English language teaching and learning in India with the broader social and economic processes of globalization in a developing country. The study is situated in a government school, a site where classrooms have rarely been qualitatively described, and where the Three Language Formula (TLF) is being fundamentally transformed due to increasing demand from the community for earlier access to the linguistic capital of English. Through research conducted in a call centre the author also shows what the requirements of new workplaces are and how government schools are trying to meet this demand.
Cambridge Core - Grammar and Syntax - Languages of the World - by Asya Pereltsvaig
The emergence in recent years of heteroglossic conceptions of bi/multilingualism and the related construct of translanguaging has raised questions about how these notions relate to more traditional conceptions of additive bilingualism, biliteracy, and the overall academic achievement of minoritized students. In this article, Jim Cummins provides a critical examination of both additive bilingualism and additive approaches to language education to clarify the nature of these constructs and to elucidate their instructional implications. He proposes a synthesis of perspectives that replaces the term additive bilingualism with active bilingualism, that acknowledges the dynamic nature of bilingual and multilingual language practices and the instructional implications of this conceptualization, and that insists that education initiatives designed to promote academic achievement among minoritized students can claim empirical legitimacy only when they explicitly challenge raciolinguistic ideologies and, more generally, coercive relations of power.
This article offers a model of Arabic word reading according to which three conspicuous features of the Arabic language and orthography shape the development of word reading in this language: (a) vowelization/vocalization, or the use of diacritical marks to represent short vowels and other features of articulation; (b) morphological structure, namely, the predominance and transparency of derivational morphological structure in the linguistic and orthographic representation of the Arabic word; and (c) diglossia, specifically, the lexical and lexico-phonological distance between the spoken and the standard forms of Arabic words. It is argued that the triangulation of these features governs the acquisition and deployment of reading mechanisms across development. Moreover, the difficulties that readers encounter in their journey from beginning to skilled reading may be better understood if evaluated within these language-specific features of Arabic language and orthography.
Recent research on the syntax of Arabic has produced valuable literature on the major syntactic phenomena found in the language. This guide to Arabic syntax provides an overview of the major syntactic constructions in Arabic that have featured in recent linguistic debates, and discusses the analyses provided for them in the literature. A broad variety of topics are covered, including argument structure, negation, tense, agreement phenomena, and resumption. The discussion of each topic sums up the key research results and provides new points of departure for further research. The book also contrasts Standard Arabic with other Arabic varieties spoken in the Arab world. An engaging guide to Arabic syntax, this book will be invaluable to graduate students interested in Arabic grammar, as well as syntactic theorists and typologists.
In the thoroughly updated second edition of this unique book, Catherine McBride examines how the languages we know help structure the process of becoming literate. Taking an ecological and distinctively cross-cultural perspective, the book looks at reading and writing development and impairment across a range of languages, scripts, and contexts. The book covers issues including: The importance of phonological sensitivity for learning to read and to write. The first units, or building blocks, of literacy learning in different scripts such as Chinese, English, Korean Hangul, Hebrew, Hindi and Arabic. The role of visual processing in reading and writing skills. How the latest research can inform the teaching of reading. An overview of our understanding of dyslexia, including recent neuroscientific research. The developmental challenges in becoming biliterate. What is special about writing for beginners and later for comprehensive writing. Basics of reading comprehension. Children's Literacy Development, Second Edition is a timely and important contribution to our understanding of literacy around the world. Written by an eminent scholar in the field, it is the only book available that provides an overview of how children learn to read and write in different languages, and will be essential reading for all students of Developmental Psychology, Educational Psychology, Psycholinguistics and Speech Therapy.
It is commonly agreed by linguists and anthropologists that the majority of languages spoken now around the globe will likely disappear within our lifetime. The phenomenon known as language death has started to accelerate as the world has grown smaller. This extinction of languages, and the knowledge therein, has no parallel in human history. This book focuses on the essential questions: What is lost when a language dies?; What forms of knowledge are embedded in a language's structure and vocabulary?; And how harmful is it to humanity that such knowledge is lost forever? The book spans the globe from Siberia to North America to the Himalayas and elsewhere, to look at the human knowledge that is slowly being lost as the languages which express it fade from sight. It uses fascinating anecdotes and portraits of some of these languages' last remaining speakers, in order to demonstrate that this knowledge about ourselves and the world is inherently precious, and once gone, will be lost forever. This knowledge is not only our cultural heritage (oral histories, poetry, stories, etc.) but very useful knowledge about plants, animals, the seasons, and other aspects of the natural world-not to mention our understanding of the capacities of the human mind.
The paper aims to examine the policy of mother-tongue medium of instruction as a way of challenging educational disadvantages and enhancing sustainable development in Africa. The overall illiteracy rate is approximately 70% and recent facts and figures from UNESCO's 2010 Education for All Global Monitoring Report show that Africa is lagging behind in the Education for All 2015 objectives. Outcomes from regional conferences on education in Africa are reviewed, such as the 1990 Jomtien conference and the Organisation for Economic Community development and Programme for International Student Assessment consortium (OECD-PISA,2000) research on the impact of mother tongue. The article considers efforts being made in Africa in terms of mother-tongue projects, such as the Ife primary project in Nigeria, and their findings. It concludes that there is a need for a pragmatic approach to the medium of instruction whereby mother tongue and foreign languages will be on an equal basis and prevent the creation of a 'psychological gap detrimental to all cognitive maturation and intellectual development of the child' (Chumbow: 1986).
Introduction The question of mother-tongue education in South Africa remains a vexed one. On the one hand, it seems reasonable and desirable that learners should be able to receive education in their mother-tongue, if they so wish. On the other hand, there are some very real difficulties involved in the implementation of this ideal. The purpose of this paper is to clarify what these difficulties are, and then to suggest what needs to be done to overcome them. The intention is neither to argue for or against the notion of mother-tongue education in the South African context, nor to consider whether its implementation is practically possible, but simply to spell out what courses of action need to be undertaken if the idea is to be seriously pursued.
When France colonised Algeria in 1830, it was not merely economic exploitation or political domination it sought, but a comprehensive annexation that aimed at eliminating its culture. The French controlled education, government, business, and most intellectual life for one hundred thirty two years. France's colonial system imposed a harsh programme of acculturation which positioned French as the dominant language on its colonies, ousting local languages, Arabic and Berber. Profoundly de-structured by the colonial settlement, Algeria had to face a series of cultural problems relating to its national identity. A society whose true identity had been denied for a hundred and thirty years could not begin to reconstruct itself without restoring the bedrock of that identity, the Arabic language. However more than forty five years after the departure of the French colonisers, the country is still struggling to reconcile the various aspects of its personality. The discourse of identity in Algeria is the main strand of this paper. From the challenging encounter with the Western European hegemonic "Other" comes the necessity to bring forth such a discourse. In this paper, I would like to sketch broadly the status of the French language in Algeria and suggest a comparison between French Algeria and independent Algeria to see the effects of the vehicular language on this country. Every colonized people-In other words, every people in whose soul an inferiority complex has been created by the death and burial of his local cultural originality-finds him-self face to face with the language of the civilizing nation, that is with the culture of the mother country. 1 Algeria offers an ideal example for the study of the "language of the civilising nation." During the colonial era in Algeria, which started as early as 1830, France established a host of political and administrative institutions to rule beyond its borders. These had significant effects on how people worked, lived, what they learned, and how they interacted with one another. One major effect of colonisation in Algeria had been the dislocation of language. The imposition of the French language meant not only segregation, illiteracy for the great bulk of Algerian people, religious intolerance, but above all the eradication of Algerian identity and her linguistic expressions, Arabic and Berber. In this paper, I purport to examine the role that language plays in the enunciation of a culture, its capacity to chain and change. I would like to sketch broadly the status of the French language in Algeria and suggest a comparison between French Algeria and independent Algeria to see the destructive effects of the vehicular language on this country. 1 Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (New York: Grove P, 1967), 17-8.
The term globalization is never far from the front pages of newspapers these days. It evokes strong positive or negative feelings depending upon whether it is being praised by the business community for opening up world markets to more extensive trade or condemned by those who associate the term with the dramatically widening gap between rich and poor nations and people. One aspect of globalization that has important implications for educators is the increasing movement of people from one country to another. Population mobility is caused by many factors: desire for better economic conditions, the need for labour in many countries that are experiencing low birthrates, a constant flow of refugees resulting from conflicts between groups, oppression of one group by another, or ecological disasters. Economic integration within the EU also encourages the free movement of workers and their families among EU member countries. The fact that travel between countries is now fast and efficient (most of the time) obviously facilitates population mobility. A consequence of population mobility is linguistic, cultural, "racial", and religious diversity within schools. To illustrate, in the city of Toronto in Canada, 58% of kindergarten students come from homes where standard English is not the usual language of communication. Schools in Europe and North America have experienced this diversity for many years but it remains controversial, and educational policies and practices vary widely between countries and even within countries. Neo-fascist groups in a number of countries promote overtly racist policies in relation to immigrant and culturally diverse communities. Other political parties and groups adopt a somewhat more enlightened orientation and search for ways to "solve the problem" of diverse communities and their integration in schools and society. However, they still define the presence of diverse communities as a "problem" and see few positive consequences for the host society. They worry that linguistic, cultural, "racial" and religious diversity threaten the identity of the host society. Consequently, they promote educational policies that will make the "problem" disappear. Whereas neo-fascist groups advocate expulsion of immigrants or at least exclusion from the mainstream of society (e.g. in largely segregated schools and housing areas), more liberal groups advocate assimilation into the mainstream of society. However, "assimilation" is similar in many ways to "exclusion" insofar as both orientations are designed to make the "problem" disappear. Under both policies, culturally diverse groups will no longer be visible or audible. Assimilationist policies in education discourage students from maintaining their mother tongues. If students retain their culture and language, then they are viewed as less capable of identifying with the mainstream culture and learning the mainstream language of the society.
IntroductionLanguage and Social Inequality in Bureaucratic SettingsGender, Inequality, and LanguageLanguage and Political EconomyThe Colonial Transformation of Language and Social InequalityConclusion
The world's language system is undergoing rapid change because of demographic trends, new technology, and international communication.
These changes will affect both written and spoken communication. English may not be the dominant language of the future, and
the need to be multilingual will be enhanced. Although many languages are going extinct, new ones are emerging in cities and
extended social groups.