Operatori per la comunicazione internazionale

Joseph Lo Bianco

Professor of Language and Literacy Education

The University of Melbourne

Universita` Roma-Tre

Monday 27 February, 2017

11.00-13.00 (Aula 12)

Lesson focus WEEK DATE LESSON FOCUS

1 20 FEB THE LANGUAGE REGIMES OF TODAY: AN OVERVIEW WITH KEY CONCEPTS AND ISSUES IN CONTEMPORARY

SOCIETY RELATED TO THE ROLE OF LANGUAGES

2 21 FEB CONCEPTS OF CULTURAL DIVERSITY, MULTICULTURALISM AND INTERCULTURALISM

3 27 FEB CONCEPTS AND MAIN AUTHORS IN LANGUAGE POLICY AND PLANNING

4 28 FEB CHINESE AND ENGLISH: THE BIG TWO

5 06 MAR THE EUROPEAN UNION AND LANGUAGES

6 07 MAR ANNA WIERZBICKA AND ADRIAN HOLLIDAY: ENGLISH IS ANGLO AND ENGLISH IS NOT

7 13 MAR LANGUAGE DEATH, REVIVAL AND SURVIVAL.

8 14 MAR ABRAM DE SWAAM, ROBERT PHILLIPSON, ELF: ISSUES WITH GLOBAL ENGLISH

9 10 APR INTERPRETING AND TRANSLATING: SUMMATION AND REVIEW OF COURSE

Language change and la questione della lingua

• How does language change?

• Can language change be “planned”

• Can language policy work?

• Language change through cultivation

• Language change through policy

Lesson 3: CONCEPTS AND MAIN AUTHORS IN LANGUAGE POLICY AND PLANNING

Meet Professor Bernard Spolsky

Born New Zealand. Ph.D. in Linguistics University of Montreal. Head of English, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Director of the Language Policy Research Center at Bar-Ilan University, Israel. Expert in language testing, second language learning, computers in the humanities, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics and language policy. Former President of TESOL, Senior Research Fellow at the National Foreign Language Center in Washington. Many publications.

What is Language Policy? What is Language Planning?

Spolsky’s 3 components to language policy

language practices

(habits and usage of language)

language values

(beliefs and ideologies about language)

language management

(deliberate interventions in policy, regulations, or laws).

Nations, States and Languages

193 states/nations. More than 7000 languages

What do countries try to do with language policy? Compare Ireland and South Africa. Ireland tried to support one nation (the Irish nation or

ethnicity) in the one state, the Republic of Ireland. South Africa tries to support many ‘nations’, ‘identities’, ethnic groups, in one state, the Republic

of South Africa.

South Africa: before and after Apartheid (1994)

Before: Afrikaans and English After Apartheid

“The official languages of the Republic are Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, Tshivenda, Xitsonga, Afrikaans, English, isiNdebele, isiXhosa and isiZulu”

and “[R]ecognising the historically diminished use and status of the indigenous languages of our people, the state must take practical and positive measures to elevate the status and

advance the use of these languages” and gives support to:

Khoi, Nama and San languages, and sign language and respect for

all languages commonly used by communities in South Africa, including German, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Portuguese, Tamil, Telegu and Urdu; and ii), Arabic, Hebrew, Sanskrit and

other languages used for religious purposes

Republic of Ireland

The constitution (Bunreacht na hÉireann) of 1937, recognises only Irish (Gaeilge), in

Article 8 (1):

“The Irish language as the national language is the first official language”

and at 8 (2)

“The English language is recognised as a second official language”

Precedence is accorded to Irish in various ways.

Irish is the NATIONAL and OFFICIAL language, but English is the DOMINANT language.

CORPUS language change

SCRIPT

TWO REFORMS IN THE CHINESE SYSTEM: Vietnam (Quoc Ngu Romanisation) and Korea (invention of Hangul)

ONE REFORM IN THE ARABIC SYSTEM: Romanisation in Turkey

REFORM WITHIN THE ALPHABETIC SYSTEM: German orthography law of 1996 (Rechtschreibreform)

BORROWING

Maestro, Da Capo, A Capella (English music terms)

IL Manager, Lo Spread, Mergers e Aquisizioni (Italian finance and management terms)

USAGE or ‘domains’ where different languages can be used

Attempts to replace one language with another

CATALAN against CASTILIAN in CATALONIA

MALAY/SWAHILI against English in MALAYSIA and TANZANIA

Somali, Arabic and English replacing Italian in Eritrea, Libya, Somalia

IRISH attempting to replace English in Ireland

Consolidating Dialects

e.g., speak Mandarin campaign in Singapore, Speak Good English Campaigns in Singapore

ACQUISITION last week we discussed 1850-2005 ’first foreign language’

World Englishes

e.g., TEFL, TESOL, ESL, ESD

Asian languages in Australia

Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian, Korean +

Community and Aboriginal Languages in Australia

e.g., Vietnamese, Maltese, Filipino, Latvian

So far we have seen four kinds of language policy

Status: what is the official role of a language in a constitution or a law, and also the cultural status of a language in poetry or literature

Corpus: issues to do with the script, technical vocabulary and other ‘internal’ resources of a language that make it suitable for certain functions

Usage: which domains are different languages used in and the policies to change these domains

Acquisition: which languages to teach in school or university.

Drivers of language change/planning today

International Regulation/Technology

~~~ air traffic control

sea-speak

arresting on the chunnel

UNICODE

Texting

Drivers of language change/planning today

Language Study

Teaching and Learning New or Additional Languages

Business

Recreation

Research

Romance

Cultural Pursuits

Spying

Ethnic Identity

Drivers of language change today

Social Cohesion

~~~

Language rights

Education equality

Cultural Multiculturalism

“Planning” Italian

http://www.accademiadellacrusca.it/it/pagina-d-entrata

Florence 1583 "purity” of the Italian language. 1612, Accademia published the first edition of its Dictionary: the Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca,[ the

model for similar works in French, Spanish, German and English

Pietro Bembo influential in standardising and codifying Italian for modern usage.

Locutio prima/Locutio secondaria

MISSING FOR ITALY WAS A NATIONAL LANGUAGE FOR A NATION

Dante’s 4 criteria for building a NATIONAL language from the dialects:

ILLUSTRE

(eminent, enlightened, dignified)

CARDINALE (pointing dialects towards national norms)

AULICUM (official, appropriate for governance)

CURIALE (courtly, esteemed by authorities)

•

•

Some forces for language change in Italy in the global era

In the period of nations the push for language policy was NATIONALISM. Many nations did not have a state. A separate national language would help to produce a state. But in the global age what is pushing language change?

“la sindaca” ”la presidenta” “la coppia gay”. (She/he. Their. His/her. Chairperson)

Communication technology

Commerce, trade and business

Technology

Anti-racism?

Political Correctness?

Environmentalism?

‘interpreting’ culture of English as an international language

Please read:

Language, Place and Learning

Lo Bianco, 2007

Download

able at PASCAL website

http://lcn.pascalobservatory.org/sites/default/files/joe_lo_bianco_-_language_place_and_learning_-_august_2007.pdf