biological species and linguistic systems of ... Crisis of linguistic diversity and biodiversity ... (forthcoming). From language shift to language revitalization.
RESTORATION ECOLOGY AND LANGUAGE REVITALIZATION ALBERT BASTARDAS-BOADA
Departament de Filologia Catalana i Lingüística General Universitat de Barcelona
Biodiversity and linguistic diversity • The challenge of maintaining biological species and linguistic systems of humanity. • Ecological and environmental perspectives. (Ecologists and activists). Complementarity.
Ecology and complexity perspectives
• Ecosystems • multidimensional contexts • interrelationships • interactions • dynamicity, processuality (time).
Linguistic ecology: the orchestral or polyphonic metaphor
Persistence and change
According to the ecosystem’s vicissitudes. • Crisis of linguistic diversity and biodiversity = ecosystem crisis, of the contexts of existence. • (Species-in-their-context) • (Languages-in-their-context)
RESTORATION ECOLOGY: ‘BACK TO THE FUTURE”
• Ecological restoration is the ‘‘process of reestablishing to the extent possible the structure, function, and integrity of indigenous ecosystems’’ (Society for Ecological Restoration 1993 [emphasis added]). P. 1266
Restoration ecology and linguistic revitalization: 'back to the future'.
Unavoidable changes in contexts: -‘modernization’ in economy - migrations - tecnomedia - globalization, - political homogeneization - political supraintegrations - ...
How to ensure a sustainable linguistic revitalization / ecological restoration? • PRIGOGINE: • “to find out under exactly what conditions non-equilibrium situations may be stable”· (Capra, 1997:86)
-The notion of ‘minimal niche’: --Which basic contextual elements can make increased use of minority languages in the new situation? -- How to produce the linguistic revitalization, at the personal and social levels?
Multidimensional and ecosystem actions (almost) simultaneously done A)-Convince the community (cognition / emotion) B)-Increase and restore the social funcions of language: introducing new interpersonal habits (interactional) -Ensure intergenerational language transmission. Convincing new families not to leave the code, or learn and use it to talk to their children.
Multidimensional and ecosystem actions (almost) simultaneously done C)-Reach a growing collective consensus and group identification with the language. Value of differentiation, singularization (collective identity). D)-language and economy: ensuring occupational uses (earn a living, very important) (economic utility)
E)-use all available media to spread the language and make it positive associations with modernity (not just make something 'folk'). F)-political authorities’ suport in their speech practices, and in the administration, education, linguistic landscape, ...
G)-sustainable distribution of functions with the other languages in presence. Subsidiarity principle: everything that the local language can do should not be done by the more general one. (Albert Bastardas-Boada)
•The next century will, I believe, be the era of restoration in ecology” • E. O. Wilson (1992).
Albert Bastardas-Boada – Some references: (forthcoming). From language shift to language revitalization and sustainability. A complexity approach to linguistic ecology. Barcelona: Publicacions de la Universitat de Barcelona. (2017) “The ecology of language contact: Minority and majority languages”, in: Fill, A., Penz, H. (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Ecolinguistics. Oxford: Routledge, pp. 26-39. (2017) “Complexity in language contact: A socio-cognitive framework”, in: Mufwene, S. et al. (eds.), Complexity in language: Developmental and evolutionary Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 218-243. (2014) Linguistic sustainability for a multilingual humanity, Sustainable Multilingualism 5, pp. 134-163. (1996) Ecologia de les llengües. Medi, contactes i dinàmica sociolingüística [Ecology of languages. Context, contacts and sociolinguistic dynamics]. Barcelona: Proa/Enciclopèdia Catalana.
