Refine
Year of publication
Document Type
- Article (7)
- Part of a Book (3)
- Conference Proceeding (2)
Language
- English (12) (remove)
Has Fulltext
- yes (12)
Keywords
- Sprachpolitik (9)
- Mehrsprachigkeit (7)
- Minderheitensprache (6)
- Lettisch (5)
- Latvia (4)
- Bildung (3)
- Lettland (3)
- Russisch (3)
- Soziolinguistik (3)
- Amtssprache (2)
Publicationstate
- Veröffentlichungsversion (6)
- Zweitveröffentlichung (6)
- Postprint (4)
- Ahead of Print (1)
Reviewstate
- Peer-Review (12) (remove)
Publisher
Our paper discusses family language policies among multilingual families in Latvia with Russian as home language. The presentation is based on three case studies, i.e. interviews conducted with Russophones who have chosen to send their children to Latvian-medium pre-schools and schools. The main aim is to understand practices and regards among such families “from below,” i.e. which family-internal and family-external factors influenced the choice of Latvian-medium education and what impact this choice has on linguistic practices.
The paper shows that there have been critical events which both encouraged and discouraged the choice of Latvian-medium education. The wish to integrate into mainstream society has been met by obstacles both from ethnic Russians and Latvians. Yet, the three families consider their choices to be the right ones for the future development of their children in a multiethnic Latvia in which Latvian serves as the unifying language of society.
Aims and objectives:
Language debates in Latvia often focus on the role of Latvian as official and main societal language. Yet, Latvian society is highly multilingual, and families with home languages other than Latvian have to choose between different educational trajectories for their children. In this context, this paper discusses the results of two studies which addressed the question of why families with Russian as a home language choose (pre)schools with languages other than Russian as medium of instruction (MOI). The first study analyses family narratives which provide insight into attitudes and practices which lead to the decision to send children to Latvian-MOI institutions. The second study investigates language attitudes and practices by families in the international community of Riga German School.
Methodology:
The paper discusses data gathered during two studies: for the first, semi-structed interviews were conducted with Russian-speaking families who choose Latvian-medium schools for their children. For the second study, a survey was carried out in the community of an international school in Riga, sided by ethnographic observations and interviews with teachers and the school leadership.
Data and analysis:
Interviews and ethnographic observations were subjected to a discourse analysis with a focus on critical events and structures of life trajectory narratives. Survey data were processed following simple statistical analysis and qualitative content analysis.
Findings/conclusions:
Our data reveal that families highly embrace multilingualism and see the development of individual plurilingualism as important for integration into Latvian society as well as for educational and professional opportunities in the multilingual societies of Latvia and Europe. At the same time, multilingualism and multiculturalism, including Russian, are seen as a value in itself. In addition, our studies reflect the bidirectionality of family language policies in interplay with practices in educational institutions: family decisions influence children’s language acquisition at school, but the school also has an impact on the families’ language practices at home. In sum, we argue that educational policies should therefore pay justice to the wishes of families in Latvia to incorporate different language aspects into individual educational trajectories.
Originality:
Language policy is a frequent topic of investigation in the Baltic states. However, there has been a lack in research on family language policy and school choices. In this vein, our paper adds to the understanding of educational choices and language policy processes among Russian-speaking families and the international community in Latvia.
This paper discusses contemporary societal roles of German in the Baltic states (Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania). Speaker and learner statistics and a summary of sociolinguistic research (Linguistic Landscapes, language learning motivation, language policies, international roles of languages) suggest that German has by far fewer speakers and functions than the national languages, English, and Russian, and it is not a dominant language in the contemporary Baltics anymore. However, German is ahead of ‘any other language’ in terms of users and societal roles as a frequent language in education, of economic relations, as a historical lingua franca, and a language of traditional and new minorities. Highly diverse groups of users and language policy actors form a ‘coalition of interested parties’ which creates niches which guarantee German a frequent use. In the light of the abundance of its functions, the paper suggests the concept ‘additional language of society’ for a variety such as German in the Baltics – since there seems to be no adequate alternative labelling which would do justice to all societal roles. The paper argues that this concept may also be used for languages in similar societal situations and, not least, be useful in language marketing and the promotion of multilingualism.
In the context of a Nordic Conference on Bilingualism, it can be a rewarding task to look at issues such as language planning, policy and legislation from a perspective of the southern neighbours of the Nordic world. This paper therefore intends to point attention towards a case of societal multilingualism at the periphery of the Nordic world by dealing with recent developments in language policy and legislation with regard to the North Frisian speech community in the German Land of Schleswig-Holstein. As I will show, it is striking to what degree there are considerable differences in the discourse on minority protection and language legislation between the Nordic countries and a cultural area which may arguably be considered to be part of the Nordic fringe - and which itself occasionally takes Scandinavia as a reference point, e.g. in the recent adoption of a pan-Frisian flag modelled on the Nordic cross (Falkena 2006).
The main focus of the paper will be on the Frisian Act which was passed in the Parliament of Schleswig-Holstein in late 2004. It provides a certain legal basis for some political activities with regard to Frisian, but falls short of creating a true spirit of minority language protection and/or revitalisation. In contrast to the traditions of the German and Danish minorities along the German-Danish border and to minority protection in Northern Scandinavia (in particular to Sámi language rights), the approach chosen in the Frisian Act is extremely weak and has no connotation of long-term oriented language-planning, let alone a rights-based perspective.
The paper will then look at policy developments in the time since the Act was passed, e.g. in the Schleswig-Holstein election campaign in 2005, and on latest perceptions of the Frisian language situation in the discourse on North Frisian Policy in Schleswig-Holstein majority society. In the final part of the paper, I will discuss reasons for the differences in minority language policy discourse between Germany and the Nordic countries, and try to provide an outlook on how Frisian could benefit from its geographic proximity to the Nordic world.
This article looks at Latgalian from a perspective of a classification of languages. It starts by discussing relevant terms relating to sociolinguistic language types. It argues that Latgalian and its speakers show considerable similarities with many languages in Europe which are considered to be regional languages – hence, also Latgalian should be classified as such. In a second part, the article uses sociolinguistic data to indicate that the perceptions of speakers confirm this classification. Therefore, Latgalian should also officially be treated with the respect that other regional languages in Europe enjoy.
“Linguistic Landscapes” (LL) is a research method which has become increasingly popular in recent years. In this paper, we will first explain the method itself and discuss some of its fundamental assumptions. We will then recall the basic traits of multilingualism in the Baltic States, before presenting results from our project carried out together with a group of Master students of Philology in several medium-sized towns in the Baltic States, focussing on our home town of Rēzekne in the highly multilingual region of Latgale in Eastern Latvia. In the discussion of some of the results, we will introduce the concept of “Legal Hypercorrection” as a term for the stricter compliance of language laws than necessary. The last part will report on advantages of LL for educational purposes of multilingualism, and for developing discussions on multilingualism among the general public.
This paper analyzes the LL in the city of Bautzen / Budyšin in Germany, a town which is frequently considered the “capital” of the Slavonic minority of the Sorbs. It focuses on the societal role of Sorbian in relation to practices and ideologies of mainstream German society. The vast majority of signs in Bautzen / Budyšin are in German only. Sorbian is essentially restricted to explicitly Sorbian institutions and to local and regional administration. Interviews conducted in shops and on the streets reveal that paternalistic attitudes common to perceptions of language policies and minority languages in Germany dominate; practices maintain the common monolingual habitus in German society. Members of the majority population show little awareness of Sorbian issues, and Sorbian signage is seen as a generous gesture but considered essentially unnecessary. Only in most recent times, a reaction by the Sorbian community has challenged these practices and attitudes.
This paper seeks to apply the principles of the famous 3-Circle-Model devised for the description of the ecolinguistic position of English world-wide to the position of German around the world.
On the one hand, the 3-Circle-Model for English with its "Inner", "Outer" and "Extended/Expanding" Circles was invented by Kachru in the 1980s and has since then been adopted, refined and criticised by numerous authors. The situation of German world-wide, on the other hand, has only been scarcely discussed in the past 20 years. While the global extension of German is obviously by far weaker than that of English, there are also a number of noteworthy similarities in terms of historical spread and the current position of these two languages.
This paper therefore discusses the analogies of global English and German by establishing three circles for German: the Inner Circle for the core German-speaking area, i.e. Germany, Austria and Switzerland; the Outer Circle including a number of German minority areas (mostly in Europe), and finally the Extended Circle which may be denoted as "Crumbling" rather than "Expanding". The latter comprises traditional German diaspora communities in different parts of the world which either result from migration, but also reflect the previous functions of German as a language of culture and as a lingua franca in regions like Eastern Europe. The paper argues that there are some striking structural similarities, but also shows the limits of this comparison.
Over the past decades, problems related to linguistic minorities and their well-being, as well as to minority languages and their maintenance, have developed as an independent branch of minority studies. Studies of language in society and sociolinguistics, strategies of minority language survival and the empowerment of their speakers have produced a considerable output of case studies and theoretical writings.In this multifaceted field of investigation, language use, language practices, language policies and language politics represent interrelated aspects of social and linguistic relations that cannot be meaningfully addressed from a point of view of one scientific discipline only. This is specially the case when one wants to understand processes of language loss and maintenance, or the revitalization and empowerment of a language community. Such processes are linguistic expressions of complex social settings, and reflect group and individual identities that in turn express changing systems of collective values, human networks, fashions and social practices.
Resistance and adaptation to newspeakerness in educational institutions: two tales from Estonia
(2019)
The term ‘new speaker’ has recently emerged as an attempt by sociolinguists not only to understand the diferent types of speaker profles that can be found in contemporary societies, but also to grasp the underlying processes of becoming a legitimate speaker in a given society. In this article, we combine the results from two studies situated in two educational institutions in Estonia in order to fnd out about speakers’ language attitudes and experiences in connection to learning and using Estonian. We concentrate on members of the international community who have relatively recently arrived to the country. Our results indicate that these speakers fuctuate between two prototypical discourses, which we broadly dub as ‘resistance’ and ‘adaptation’ to newspeakerness. Our study thereby adds to current debates on ‘new speaker’ and language policy issues by illustrating how tensions around language legitimacy are played out on the ground in a small nation state such as Estonia.