Comments on: Getting past the ‘indigenous’ vs. ‘immigrant’ language debate

By: Peter L Patrick

Peter L Patrick — Fri, 02 Dec 2016 16:01:00 +0000

Having debated some of this with Dave Sayers before, I would say a couple things for non-specialist readers: (1) “indigenous peoples” is not an uncontroversial term but much has been written discussing and defining the term in human rights discourse, eg http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/workshop_data_background.doc. If you can define the people, then “indigenous language” is easy. Such recent discussions DO take the causes of socioeconomic disadvantage into account already. (2) No such agreement exists for “immigrant” but that doesn’t mean no reasonable solutions are possible. For language purposes, you could look at defining locally w.r.t. not first presence but presence in significant numbers (eg most Hindi and Caribbean people arrived in Britain from the 1950s on, though yes some preceded by centuries), by measures of integration or assimilation, etc. – all highly relevant to language maintenance. Recent immigrants will never receive the same language rights as other groups, anywhere, full stop – partly because of recency. (3) The problem of emerging contact vernaculars is a non sequitur in this blog, that does not bear on defining immigrant or indigenous language rights. (Anyway, Multicultural London English is not one.) I love ’em – I am a creolist – but it just is not the relevant issue. (4) A solution that treats indigenous language speakers and recent immigrants the same is neither realistic, nor desirable (unless an unrealistically good one is imagined). They are too different. In sum, we should not seek to “get past” this distinction/debate, but rather understand it better.

By: Tom Ricento

Tom Ricento — Wed, 12 Aug 2015 13:14:03 +0000

A nice discussion on an important topic. I would refer readers to my recent article ‘Thinking about language: What political theorists need to know about language in the real world’ in Language Policy13(4), 351-39 (2014) which deals with language, culture, identity, and rights; it’s in the thematic issue ‘Language Policy and Political Theory’, co-edited by T. Ricento, Y. Peled, and P. Ives (also published as a book by Springer: Language Policy and Political Theory: Building Bridges, Assessing Breaches’, 2015). John Edwards has also written on the issue of ‘who is indigenous’ and I would say that the major (consensus?) criterion for categorizing a language as indigenous is political and has to do with a history of oppression, colonization, and contemporary marginalization, as you note in your piece. As you note, time depth can never work, since ‘originalness’ is a historical and political construct, part of the myth of nationism/nationalism (to use Fishman’s distinction).

Tom Ricento, University of Calgary

By: Alexandra Grey

Alexandra Grey — Wed, 12 Aug 2015 09:34:34 +0000

Also, mentioned in regards to this blog post on the BAAL email list but more useful if the Language on the Move readership can see it here, was this suggestion of related material: Mehdi Hasan’s show ‘Head to Head’, interview with Oxford Professor Sir Paul Collier, author of Exodus: Immigration and Multiculturalism: discussion of “indigenous” from 5min49sec: http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/headtohead/2015/07/immigration-150728134414833.html

By: Alexandra Grey

Alexandra Grey — Wed, 12 Aug 2015 09:33:04 +0000

Agreed, Dave, more problematisation and debate about “indigenous” would be useful. But the policy split is not always between indigenous/immigrant language. In regards to the PRC, where I focus my research, “indigenous” is used by academics (writing in English) in reference to people and languages in a subversive challenge to the official avoidance of that term. The state prefers instead the label “minority ethnic nationality language” (少数民族语言). “Immigrant” languages do not enter into the policy picture.

See for example Beckett and Postiglione (eds) 2012 book, China’s Assimilationist Language Policy, in which the contributors intentionally use the double-barreled label “indigenous and minority”. In their opening chapter, Beckett and Postiglione explain the politics of “indigenous” in China (p.4). In chapter two, Minglang Zhou argues that China’s minority people are, in fact, mostly indigenous (p.18). Now, there is a concern (for me) that these authors treat indigeneity as a question of fact not a social construction. However, the fact that the term was problematised and discussed was one of the strengths of this book, in my view. (The book has weaknesses too, especially in making out it bold thesis that the language policy is assimilationist, see e.g. Erbaugh’s review: The China Quarterly/ Volume 210 /June 2012, pp 527-528. That review also has a weakness in failing to grapple with a policy saying one thing and doing another as Shoamy’s work on hidden policies suggests.)

By: Ibrar

Ibrar — Wed, 12 Aug 2015 09:06:33 +0000

Thanks for the article Dave. Enjoyed it.

This is a related discussion from Mehdi Hasan’s show ‘Head to Head’ where he interviews Paul Collier on immigration, diversity, etc.
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/headtohead/2015/07/immigration-150728134414833.html

The issue of what is ‘indigenous’ is interesting and emerges at around 5:49 into the recording.

Perhaps it adds to the discussion here.

Best wishes

ibrar

By: Janet Enever

Janet Enever — Wed, 12 Aug 2015 08:55:42 +0000

Thanks Dave for this very useful perspective – particularly as Nancy has recently been one of our visiting profs!

I will encourage colleagues working on ‘indigenous’ languages to comment further on your arguments!
Best, Janet