1
Explanations
1.Aim:
We want to gather here the main features of the sociolinguistic and language policy situation of your country, with special emphasis on language policy in education.
This information will be part of the “country sheet” that will be published in the book in order to present each country of our 3 networks and will be used as background for assumptions to be made about possible explanations for facts shown by our observation/evaluation of the implementation of Ja-Ling.
2.Definitions:
Types of languages[1] :
Two types of minority language[2] may be identified within any particular country:
- languages whose speakers consider themselves to be natives, which we shall refer to as indigenous minority languages(IMLs);
- languages whose speakers consider themselves to be immigrants, or the children of immigrants, which we shall refer to as immigrant languages (ILs).
This distinction should, we believe, accommodate the different categories used in the countries concerned.
We are well aware of the difficulties posed by any definitions in this area (self definition/hetero-definition, date and generation based criteria and so on), and that there will always be a certain number of cases where the definitions do not fit well or are seen to be arbitrary.
Feelings of belonging to immigrant groups are often abandoned by the time of the third generation. However, variations are still possible, depending on such factors as the integration/assimilation policy, the size and degree of homogeneity of the immigrant community, the extent of inter-and outside marriage and links with the country of origin.
Indigenous minority languages as defined may be official languages in the countries in question at various levels, such as in part or all of the country, use for official purposes and so on.
- The term "foreign language" (FL) is used to describe any language in a particular country's education system which does not have the status of an official language in that country and is neither an IML nor an IL
However, the definition needs to be clarified partly in terms of who is being taught.
A country's minority languages (IMLs or ILs) which are also official languages in other countries will be considered to be foreign languages (FLs) if they are being taught to pupils for whom they are not the language of origin. The teaching of a language may therefore be considered in this report in the part devoted to foreign languages and the part concerned with indigenous minority and immigrant languages.
This applies, for example, to Danes learning German: if they belong to the German-speaking minority they are learning it as a indigenous minority language, otherwise it becomes a foreign language.
This leaves the more complex case where minority languages learnt by the majority are official languages of the countries concerned.
This is the case with Swedish, as learnt by most young Finns, or French, as learnt by young Swiss for whom it is not their native language. In these two cases it is difficult to speak of a foreign language.
In the case of young Finns, the IML framework applies perfectly. It is simply necessary to note that young members of the majority community all learn the minority language, which is Swedish, while young members of the minority community all have access to the majority language.
However, it is counter-intuitive to speak of a minority language in the case of French in Switzerland.
We should adopt the following approach :
Where a country's official language is taught to persons in that country for whom it is not the language of origin, a distinction may be drawn between two sorts of situation:
- where one of the languages is very much in the majority: in these cases, such teaching will be considered in the context of indigenous minority languages (which will also open the way to considering teaching of the official majority language to "minority" pupils). Of course we also specify that this language is an official language!
- where the various official languages are relatively equally distributed (as in Switzerland): we have to use a specific denomination, such as : “national languages” or “other official languages of the country”. In calculations (for instance: number of languages taught, “dispersion” …), we consider them as “Foreign languages”.
Language diversity in education systems :
Diversity will be of course our main point of interest concerning LPE (Language Policy in Education). We can assume that reactions of actors (students, teachers, parents) to the introduction of Ja-Ling activities, difficulties and challenges which can arise from it, will be different in countries where the school is already open towards language diversity and in countries where school is closed towards it.
We consider that the “amount” of linguistic diversity of an education system is the result of the number of different languages taught, the number of persons (pupils) learning them and the standard of the teaching. (The third factor being of course the most difficult to appraise).
This definition will serve as the basis for the choice of the questions to be answered in the LPE part of the country sheet (see file LangPolSheet).
Language places /vs./ language tokens
(This distinction is useful only for Foreign Languages (FLs))
An education system may make it compulsory or optional to study one or more languages at a given level, without specifying what it or they should be. In such cases it is possible to talk about a particularnumberof (compulsory or optional) language places.
This notion should be distinguished from that of language 'tokens', which refers to the number of specified individual languages available for any given place or for all the places combined. An education system in which the pupils can choose between four different specified, or "designated", languages (for example, German, Chinese, Bulgarian and Portuguese) would have 4 language 'tokens'.
The issue of the number of "places" only has any real meaning in the five sectors which make up pre-school, primary and secondary (lower, upper and vocational) education.
LFLs (Less frequently studied languages) /vs./ MFL (the most frequently studied language)
(Again: this distinction is useful only for Foreign Languages)
From the standpoint of diversity there is a significant difference between a country where pupils can choose between six languages but one of them receives 95% of choices (and the others 10, 8, 5, 3 and 1%) and another where there are also six languages but the percentages are more evenly balanced.
This distinction will be refered to as the "dispersion" factor.
Very often, the most frequently studied language (MFL) (more simply: “the most frequent language”) benefits by many other advantages: more teaching hours weekly, better statute concerning accreditation … than LFLs (less frequent languages).
The distinction between one MFL and all other foreign languages, considered as LFLs, can be very fruitful for the appreciation of diversity in school systems.
3.How to analyse the situation of IMLs and Ils in education?
How should the level of diversity in the teaching of indigenous minority languages and immigrant languages be measured in an education system?
The same tools can be applied to both types of language, with some minor adaptations. This also has the advantage that differences of treatment in the two types of minority language are more clearly highlighted.
Applying the general definition of diversity to the specific case of minority languages reveals the following:
1.The distinction between language places and languagetokens as applied to foreign languages is no longer relevant. The aim is no longer to develop certain individuals' linguistic skills from scratch by adding the greatest possible number of new languages to their repertoire but to improve their command of one particular language (and thus one "place") determined in advance (that is, a single "token") by the fact that they already have at least a partial command of it or feel bound to it through cultural, affective or other attachments.
Naturally, all those concerned must also have guaranteed access to the official majority language.
The problem of “number of languages”, dealt for FLs trough items A and b of LangPolSheet, can therefore be expressed here initially in terms of the proportion of all the indigenous minority and immigrant languages spoken which are actually taught (wether all languages present on the territory are taught, or only some of them, or none of them !).
The use of a language as a medium for teaching other subjects, which in the case of foreign languages is one of the components of a "quality" indicator (cf. item h of LangPolSheet), takes on quite a different dimension in the case of indigenous minority and immigrant languages, in which children already have skills prior to starting school. A systematic distinctionwill therefore be made between teaching or instruction in indigenous minority and immigrant languages (IML/ILs) and the teaching ofthem as subjects.
It has to be recognised that, particularly in the case of immigrant languages, instruction in IML/ILs can be very difficult to organise. Nor is it always one of parents' main concerns. However, so long as it is seen as an element of (at least) bilingual teaching, it is a much better option from the standpoint of diversity, in that it allows speakers of these languages to fully develop their available skills and thus improve their mastery of their language.
- The fact that an indigenous minority or immigrant language is represented in the education system is only one dimension of the situation. Account also has to be taken of the number of students who actually benefit from the opportunity. This can only be assessed in relation to the number of potential beneficiaries.
Of course, the demand for such facilities can vary and it would not be fair not to take it into account if our first concern were to appreciate the “good will” of authorities. For our main interest, which is to get a picture of the value of diversity within a given society, the lack of demand expressed by the members of minority communities is also a very important indicator. For this reason, we will take the number of potential beneficiaries as our point of reference. Besides, information on effective demand is generally not available (and very difficult to investigate properly).
3.It is also important to know whether pupils with an indigenous minority or immigrant language as their language of origin learn the official majority language (OML), and vice versa.
3.aIt goes without saying that pupils with an indigenous minority or immigrant language as their language of origin must learn the official majority language. Nevertheless, it needs to be established whether this is in fact the case in the various education sectors, including the "other sectors" (not only the five sectors we usually are interested in: pre-school, primary and secondary (lower, upper and vocational) education). Such teaching need not in fact extend to every sector since pre-school education, and even part of primary education, depending on how long it lasts, could well be entirely in an indigenous minority or immigrant language. In case of speakers of an immigrant language, access of adults to the official majority language (OML) is a very important issue.
3.bThe case of persons having the OML as their language of origin learning an indigenous minority or immigrant language is much rarer. It is easy to see what this reveals concerning mutual recognition of cultures and languages that co-exist.
Michel CandelierExplanations.doc22/10/18
[1]A lot of elements presented in this tool have been taken from / inspired by a study I have made for Strasbourg: Candelier, Michel & Dumoulin, Bérengère & Koishi, Atsuko (1999). Language diversity in the education systems of the member States of the Council for Cultural Co-operation - Report of a preliminary survey. Strasbourg: Conseil de l’Europe. [Report to the Council of Europe, DECS/EDU/LANG(99)11]
[2] Reference might be made to the now classical debate on the meaning of "minority". We also believe that this is more a matter of political and symbolic power than of mere numbers.