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Will Indigenous Languages Survive? AR254-AN34-16 ARI 25 August 2005 15:3 Will Indigenous Languages Survive? Michael Walsh Department of Linguistics, University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia; email: [email protected] Annu. Rev. Anthropol. Key Words 2005. 34:293–315 language revitalization, politics of language, responsibilities of The Annual Review of Anthropology is online at researchers, Indigenous activism anthro.annualreviews.org Abstract doi: 10.1146/ annurev.anthro.34.081804.120629 Much attention has been focused on the survival of Indigenous lan- by Instituto de Eclogia, A.C, Consorcio CONACyT on 02/19/07. For personal use only. Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2005.34:293-315. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.org Copyright c 2005 by guages in recent years. Many, particularly anthropologists and lin- Annual Reviews. All rights guists, anticipate the demise of the majority of Indigenous languages reserved within this century and have called on the need to arrest the loss of 0084-6570/05/1021- languages. Opinions vary concerning the loss of language; some re- 0293$20.00 gard it as a hopeless cause, and others see language revitalization as a major responsibility of linguistics and kindred disciplines. To that end, this review explores efforts in language revitalization and documentation and the engagement with Indigenous peoples. It re- mains unclear why some attempts at language revitalization succeed, whereas others fail. What is clear is that the process is profoundly political. 293 AR254-AN34-16 ARI 25 August 2005 15:3 Portuguese of Brazil is simply a variant of Contents a language indigenous to Portugal, and the “real” Indigenous languages are those spo- WHAT ARE INDIGENOUS ken by minorities: typically small-scale groups LANGUAGES? ................. 294 such as those captured in “Small Languages THE RANGE OF INDIGENOUS and Small Language Communities” in the In- LANGUAGE SITUATIONS .... 294 ternational Journal of the Sociology of Language. MEASURING ENDANGERMENT: In this account this narrower sense is usually LANGUAGE VITALITY AND adopted even if its precise definition remains DECLINE ...................... 297 elusive. LANGUAGE MAINTENANCE In addressing the question of the survival AND REVITALIZATION of Indigenous languages we must also con- STRATEGIES ................... 299 sider how this question articulates with endan- LIVING (?) LANGUAGES, gered languages. Toput it briefly, Indigenous PRESERVATION, AND THE languages overlap with endangered languages ROLE OF LINGUISTS ......... 301 but are not coextensive: Some Indigenous lan- THE FATE OF INDIGENOUS guages (in the narrower sense at least) are not LANGUAGES AND WHICH endangered languages. For example, Crowley MIGHT SURVIVE .............. 303 (1998) sees many Indigenous languages in the SOME INDIGENOUS VIEWS ..... 307 Pacific as not being endangered. However, CONCLUSION .................... 308 Dixon (1991) sees many of these languages as endangered. Therefore, what counts as en- dangered is contested by linguistics scholars. Even a “large” language such as Catalan, with WHAT ARE INDIGENOUS a speaker population of more than 11,000,000, LANGUAGES? can be regarded as endangered (Mir 2004; see Broadly defined, an Indigenous language is also Strubell 2001). The assessment is compli- any language that is “native” to a particu- cated by the vast range of situations involving lar area. On this basis, Hawaiian is indige- Indigenous languages. nous to Hawaii notwithstanding that it origi- nally came from somewhere else, whereas the English used in Hawaii is non-Indigenous. THE RANGE OF INDIGENOUS Mandarin could be described as an Indigenous LANGUAGE SITUATIONS language of China along with a number of In recent years, a considerable amount of other less prominent languages. But how long literature has appeared on language endan- does it take for a language that has migrated germent and language revitalization, and by Instituto de Eclogia, A.C, Consorcio CONACyT on 02/19/07. For personal use only. Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2005.34:293-315. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.org into a new setting to become an Indigenous much of this refers specifically to Indigenous language? For instance, should one regard language situations. Among the more com- Yiddish (Fishman 2001b) or the Spanish of prehensive collections of papers are Robins & Puerto Ricans in New York City (Garcia et al. Uhlenbeck (1991), Brenzinger (1992) (with 2001) as Indigenous languages? Each has had a focus on East Africa), Fishman (2001a), a presence in New York City for ∼100 years Grenoble & Whaley (1998), Matsumura and has by now achieved a status and nature (1998), Hinton & Hale (2001), Bradley & distinct from their parent languages. Clearly Bradley (2002b), and Janse & Tol (2003), to the definition of an Indigenous language will mention a few. And organizations such as be a matter of degree. No one is likely to ar- the Foundation for Endangered Languages gue that Hawaiian is a language indigenous have produced a series of conference pro- to Hawaii, whereas some may claim that the ceedings including Blythe & Brown (2003) 294 Walsh AR254-AN34-16 ARI 25 August 2005 15:3 and Argenter & Brown (2004). Entire issues of this century most of the languages still left of journals have been devoted to these issues, will be endangered. Whether one agrees with including American Anthropologist (2003, Vol. Krauss’s gloomy predictions, there has been UNESCO: United 105, Issue 4), on language ideologies, rights, a tremendous outpouring of effort to docu- Nations Educational, and choices and dilemmas and paradoxes of ment, preserve, and revitalize Indigenous lan- Scientific, and loss, retention, and revitalization; Anthropol- guages since Krauss’s clarion call to the lin- Cultural ogy and Education Quarterly (1999, Vol. 30, guistic community. It is, of course, not Krauss Organization Issue 1), on issues of authenticity and identity alone who has triggered this interest, but his in Indigenous language education; Current is one of the most often quoted statements on Issues in Language Planning (2001, Vol. 2, the state of the world’s languages. Issues 2 and 3), on language planning and In a brief survey like the Annual Review it language revival; the International Journal is possible to give only a flavor of the diver- of the Sociology of Language (1998, Vol. 132), sity of Indigenous language situations rather on Indigenous language use and change in than provide detail on their social, politi- the Americas; Journal of Multilingual and cal, and economic contexts. In one account Multicultural Development (2000, Vol. 21, alone (Ash et al. 2001), we find examples of Issue 5), on language, nationalism, and language maintenance or restoration in re- minority rights; Practicing Anthropology (1999, mote Australia, in Nicaragua, in Boston, and Vol. 21, Issue 2), on reversing language shift; for Belfast Irish. Irish is an interesting case and a substantial portion of Journal of Lin- because it is seen by many as a failure in guistic Anthropology (2002, Vol. 12, Issue 2), the attempt to maintain an Indigenous lan- on the discourse of language endangerment. guage (e.g., Ahlqvist 2002, Carnie 1996, O Also, numerous Web sites are devoted to en- Dochartaigh 2000): “...[T]he smell of fail- dangered languages, among them being the ure has hung around the ‘revival’ movement UNESCO Red Book of Endangered Lan- like a corrosive fog for decades” (McCloskey guages (http://www.tooyoo.l.u-tokyo.ac. 2001, p. 43). Nevertheless we are told, “Irish jp/Redbook/index.html), which itself has currently has perhaps 20,000 or 30,000 native many links to other Web sites of interest. speakers among whom are reasonably large Individual monographs have appeared on numbers of young people. In addition, it has general themes (Abley 2003, Crystal 2000, perhaps 100,000 people who use the language Dalby 2003, McWhorter 2001, Nettle & regularly in their daily routines . ...There is Romaine 2000) or on specific languages little chance that Irish will become moribund [House (2002) on Navajo; King (2000) on (at least in the technical sense) in the next Quichua; Stebbins (2003) on Sm’algyax]. 100 years” (p. 45). Compared with the literature on these themes Such differences of opinion are not con- in the 1980s and earlier, there has been an fined to Irish. The Pacific is an area of great by Instituto de Eclogia, A.C, Consorcio CONACyT on 02/19/07. For personal use only. Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2005.34:293-315. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.org exponential growth in the past 10–15 years. linguistic diversity and small populations of Why such interest? speakers. This is an area where we would an- Many would link the increased attention ticipate little chance of survival for Indige- to a series of articles appearing in the the nous languages, a view shared by Dixon (1991) Linguistic Society of America’s journal, Lan- and Muhlh¨ ausler¨ (1996). However Crowley guage,in1992 (Hale et al. 1992). Perhaps the (1995) is much more optimistic than are some most famous of these is “The World’s Lan- commentators and suggests that one should guages in Crisis” (Krauss 1992), in which the not be concerned by small language popula- general picture is one of widespread disaster tions: Linguistic behavior is what is important that is only likely to get worse. According to and on that basis it turns out that there is “no Krauss we can expect to lose half of the world’s immediate prospect of large-scale language ∼6000 languages this century, and by the end shift, despite the very small average size of www.annualreviews.org • Will Indigenous Languages Survive? 295 AR254-AN34-16 ARI 25 August 2005 15:3 individual languages” (p. 335; see also than the Ojibwe to the south in the United Crowley 1998). And what about Africa? This States (R. Rhodes, personal communication). is an important area because Africa has ∼2000 Within Australia the state of New South languages, i.e., around one third of the world’s Wales is much better resourced than the languages.
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