Maintaining a Minority Language: A Case Study of Hispanic Teenagers
256
Maintaining a Minority Language: A Case Study of Hispanic Teenagers
256Paperback
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781853597404 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Multilingual Matters Ltd. |
| Publication date: | 08/25/2004 |
| Series: | Multilingual Matters , #129 |
| Pages: | 256 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.85(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.55(d) |
About the Author
Elizabeth Ramirez is a doctoral student at the University of New South Wales in the field of Medical Interpreting. She is a practising interpreter, translator and Spanish language teacher. Her research interests and expertise are in the area of translation into a second language, community interpreting and bilingualism. Elizabeth co-authored the NLLIA Spanish Language Profile in Australia (1996) . She has also published papers in international journals, and developed a CD Rom for Spanish-English Bilingual teenagers.
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CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Objectives
This book has two overarching objectives. The first is to present an understanding of the factors that lead to the development of biliteracy and bilingualism in the individual and the maintenance of these in communities, particularly minority communities. Second, it attempts to explore and test out these understandings in a particular community – the Spanish-speaking community in Sydney, Australia. In particular it looks at the bilingualism and biliteracy of 106 Hispanic teenagers.
A major challenge for linguistic minorities, whether indigenous, refugee or migrant, is the maintenance of their language and culture. In almost all societies around the world, the nationalist myths that societies are (or can be) homogenous culturally, linguistically and ethnically, have led to the overt or covert suppression of cultural and linguistic difference, and sometimes the 'cleansing' of ethnic difference (including genocide). Hornberger (1997) refers to English as one of the main 'predator' languages that is endangering languages around the world, particularly in Australia where it has overwhelming cultural and economic dominance.
However, the issue of maintenance of minority languages is not a simple yes–no polar issue. The extent and degree of maintenance are also major concerns. A more nuanced understanding of minority language maintenance and shift requires the examination of the degree of acquisition of various elements of proficiency, including spoken language, basic literacy skills, grammar and high register.
There is an extensive literature that reports the success of bilingual education in producing high levels of bilingualism and biliteracy – for general surveys see Cummins (1996, 2000), Baker (2001) and, for a recent example, Lindhold-Leary (2001). However, the unfortunate reality is that bilingual education is not accessible to most language minorities. Transitional bilingual education, tapering out after the early years of primary school, is more widely available, but full bilingual education throughout schooling is rare. In New South Wales, Australia, where the research reported in this book was carried out, full bilingual education, in which subjects other than language are taught in two languages, hardly exists (Gibbons, 1997). The same is true in many other countries. The reasons for this include practical problems (for instance it can be difficult and expensive to organise bilingual education for students that comprise a small language minority in a school), resources and mistaken beliefs (see Cummins, 2000).
If mainstream education does not provide an appropriate education for all children, it is left to the individual, the family, the minority community and non-mainstream institutions to support bilingualism in children, including second and subsequent generations froma migrant background. In this case, we must ask what are the arguments for and against maintaining a minority language.
The arguments against maintenance include the psychological risk, and the investment of time, energy and money that may be involved. The psychological risk is one of identity conflict and discomfort, and sometimes this is found among people who do not gain a good mastery of both languages (people with high proficiency in both languages are usually comfortable in both language contexts, and therefore tend not to suffer from this conflict). The other possible disadvantage is that minorities may have to invest time, money and effort in seeking out and utilising situations that favour the development of a minority language. In concrete terms, minority language children in New South Wales may need to attend minority language classes (mostly at the weekend) in addition to regular schooling.
Some of the possible benefits of minority language maintenance are:
for the individual:
• higher majority language proficiency and literacy (see Cummins, 1996, and the interdependence hypothesis);
• more positive self concept/self esteem;
• travel and employment opportunitie;
• cognitive flexibility (Hamers & Blanc, 2000: 88–92);
for the family:
• it strengthens contact within the family and maintains contact with relatives, especially overseas;
for the community:
• it contributes to community maintenance and pride;
for the nation:
• it meets the need for culturally-aware fluent bilinguals within the nation and for contacts with other nations.
Edwards (1994: 136) writes 'Questions of language ... of the protection of threatened collectivities are ... especially significant for minority groups. Unlike powerful mainstream societies, they do not have the luxury of ignoring these matters.'
Given the above, and using a financial metaphor, it is for the individual, the family and the community to decide whether the returns on bilingual proficiency are worth the investment and the risks. Many bilingual communities, particularly minority-language communities, are profoundly concerned about creating and sustaining high levels of proficiency in both the languages that are used in the community. The majority language will often be needed for interaction with friends, family and colleagues from outside the minority community, for participation in the mainstream society, and for access to the mainstream economy, institutions and services. As noted above, the minority language is often viewed as essential to cultural continuity and identity and to maintaining contact with people in the minority community (and often the region of origin). Furthermore, all else being equal, it is a bonus to know two languages rather than one, and there are few advantages to being monolingual. One of our teenage interviewees wrote 'I think to have the chance to be able to communicate in more than one language is a marvellous gift that opens doors to another world (cultures, customs, traditions)'.
For those who have made a decision in favour of high level bilingualism in the absence of bilingual education, we hope to provide information that may assist in this endeavour. In particular we wish to thank and to assist the Spanish-speaking community in Sydney.
Factors in the Development of Bilingualism and Biliteracy
Bilingualism has many aspects: one is the nature of the bilingual mind, whether bilinguals have a single fused representation of their languages, or separate representations; another is the patterning of bilingual code choice; and a third is the development and maintenance of proficiency in two languages. This book deals with the last of these three, examining two interlinked issues. First, what are the factors that lead to the development of two languages in an individual, and thereby the maintenance of two languages in a community? The second issue is the level and nature of the proficiency in the two languages. Are they both equally developed? Is there some type of functional specialisation such that certain domains of life are best handled in one language, while other domains are handled in the other language? And finally, what is the linkage between our issues – do certain factors lead to certain types and levels of proficiency? Haugen (1972) refers to this area as 'language ecology'.
Proficiency
Minority-language maintenance is, in effect, an attempt to resist the cultural power of languages that are spoken by a majority of the population, and/or languages that are, for some reason, socially dominant. Most minority languages lack both an official status and a role within national life – they tend to be used only in the home, and to some degree in the minority-language community (see the classic Fishman et al., 1971). These facts mean that, for second generations and beyond, it is difficult to achieve a full and literate proficiency in both languages. While home use often means that children develop a domestic variety of the minority language, the lack of a place for it outside the home and community may mean that the children have little opportunity to develop aspects of the language that relate to more complex and more public uses. On the other hand, their experience of the second language may lack an intimate or domestic register. Early bilingualism studies tended to focus on whether or not a conversational command is developed in two languages. More recently, we have seen a shift in emphasis, and bilingualism researchers such as Cummins (1996), Verhoeven (1991a; 1991b) and Hamers (1994) are examining the extent to which minority-language speakers develop fuller and more literate proficiency in both languages.
Looking at the process of development, the first language experienced by minority-language children will be the home language, mostly the minority language. However, they will meet the majority language in the environment – increasingly so as they have contact with the wider community and its media. If education is available only in the majority language, then once a child starts school, the second language will begin to play a major role. In time it will overtake the home language, and the child may well develop a stronger command of the second language than the mother tongue. On the other hand, Cummins (1984) claims that children who begin school with little command of the school language can remain behind mother-tongue students in their command of the school language for up to seven years. There is a risk that these children will have an age-appropriate control of neither the mother tongue nor the school language (see Slade & Gibbons, 1987, for evidence of this in Australia). Biliterate language proficiency is therefore an issue of concern for the parents/caregivers, and for the students themselves.
We have looked at the advantages of bilingualism in general, and it may be good to consider the advantages of biliteracy. In general biliteracy enhances all the advantages discussed for bilingualism, in particular:
• access to written and specialist registers of language, and consequently;
• access across time, space and culture, to material that even in a post-literate age is still less available in the spoken language. In particular it gives access to the minority world view;
• employment and travel – the spoken language is useful, but literacy increases possibilities;
• literacy in one language supports literacy in the other.
These themes will be developed further in this book.
In this book we will attempt to examine the development of a fuller bilingual proficiency in both languages but, since it is more likely to be underdeveloped, we will examine proficiency in the minority language in more detail, and we will attempt to establish linkages with the following factors.
Factors
The factors that create and sustain bilingualism are often grouped into three main categories, that we shall refer to as societal, contact, and attitudinal. This type of categorisation (not always with the same titles) is used by, amongst others, Hamers and Blanc (2000) and Allard and Landry (1994). The societal layer is a broad socio-structural area, and is manifested concretely in the existence of social institutions and media. Contact concerns the individual's experience of the social world, particularly social interaction – what language does an individual use with neighbours, in shops and cafés, and with the doctor? Attitudes and beliefs exist within the mind of the individual, although they are mostly socially constructed, and are to some degree shared with others as part of culture.
It is important to note, however, that these categories interact in complex ways. For instance publishing a newspaper in a minority language (a societal phenomenon) enables contact with a more formal style of the language, and enhances the prestige of the language, affecting attitudes. However, the decision to publish a newspaper is itself likely to be influenced by attitudes and beliefs about the minority language. This type of circularity bedevils much of the discussion about bilingualism. It is perhaps best to see these categories as the layers through which various factors and variables are projected. These themes will all be expanded upon considerably in later chapters. The categories and their interaction are summarised in Figure 1.1.
The Organisation of the Book
The organisation of this book follows roughly the structure of the preceding section. Chapter 2 examines in greater depth the issue of language proficiency. This is followed by a discussion of the measurement of bilingual proficiency in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 looks at the influence on bilingualism of broad socio-structural and demographic factors. Chapter 5 examines the role of interpersonal interaction in the development and maintenance of bilingualism. Chapter 6 concentrates more on biliteracy, particularly the influence of media use, literacy practices and education. Chapter 7 discusses the role of attitudes and beliefs in the creation of bilingual proficiency, including attitudes to languages and their speakers, to bilingualism itself, and to the vitality of languages and communities. Chapter 8 attempts to weave together all these factors and their proficiency outcomes, and to make suggestions for language maintenance in minority communities.
Chapters 5 to 7 share a similar structure: the first part of each chapter is a general discussion of the issues, including some reporting of findings from elsewhere. The second part then shows how we investigated the issues in the Sydney Hispanic community, and what we discovered.
The Context of the Studies
The studies reported in this book are set in the national context of Australia, a country of recent immigration that still receives a per capita migration that is among the world's highest. With the exception of the treatment of its Aboriginal minority, Australia is comparatively tolerant of ethnic, linguistic and cultural differences. Nevertheless, the dominance of English in Australia is absolute. While one can survive in Australia without English, this is only possible on the margin of society. Mainstream employment, education and access to services (for instance department stores) is feasible only if one speaks English. As in many migrant societies, it is expected that the second generation of refugee or migrant minorities will become 'Australian', in effect that they will act in accordance with Anglo-Australian behavioural norms, and that they will be native speakers of Australian English. The overwhelming hegemony of English, and its sheer cultural 'weight' makes the maintenance of minority languages a daunting challenge for minority communities in Australia. In practice, ghettoisation is unusual in second and subsequent generations, who generally use English to participate fully in the mainstream economy and culture, while maintaining alongside this varying levels of the minority language and culture. As Tuominen (1999: 57) remarks 'We have evidence that language use among immigrant groups often shifts towards a society's majority language'.
More specifically, the context of the study is Sydney, by far the largest city in Australia, with a population of over 4 million. It is also Australia's most multicultural city, and more than half the population is not of Anglo-Celtic heritage. The multilingualism of the school population can be seen in the fact that around a third of children present at primary school speaking little or no English (Abdoolcader, 1989). More than 90% of the schoolchildren in some areas speak English as a second language (Gibbons et al., 1994).
The community within which the studies took place is that of Spanish speakers. The Spanish-speaking community is an interesting candidate for study, because it is a middle-sized community, that is neither notably disadvantaged (unlike in some parts of the USA) nor advantaged. To look at the community in general, we used census data to examine the role of societal factors, since such broad social factors need broad social data. However, if we take, for example, media, education and socio-economic status (SES), we can also look at their impact in a particular smaller population. Most of our data comes from such a smaller population.
We focused on teenagers, because it is in the teens that higher levels of language proficiency are acquired, so this is a crucial time for the development of full bilingualism and biliteracy. We interviewed 106 Hispanic teenagers in their homes, each interview taking around two hours. The interviews were conducted in 1997–1998.
The interviews
The interviews had two main elements: an 'open' element, where interviewees were asked in very broad terms to discuss their ideas about language in their lives and their identity as Hispanics; they were also asked more specific open questions, such as 'where do you use Spanish?' Interviewees entered their responses into a laptop computer.
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Copyright © 2004 John Gibbons and Elizabeth Ramirez.
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