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liMATCAIAL COLLr C' istitute Q Culture and East-. tvist Cuuci L Honolulu Hawaii and the Aboriginal affairs arena. Assimilationist policies that Language Planning sought to impose a lifestyle on the Aboriginal people Development of an Australian in which all vestiges of traditional culture and values Creole were supplanted with Western ones were replaced Aboriginal with self-determination policies that allowed Aboriginal people to choose for themselves the Sandefur* by John composition of the life-style toward which they would move. The cumulative result has been a phenomenal The of major language problem Aborigines in the rise in "Aboriginality"-a societywide reassertion of north of Australia, as perceived b non-Aboriginal Aboriginal heritage, including recognition of time for a is do not people almost century, that they speak legitimacy and importance of Aboriginal languages. "correct" English.' Language treatment before the The issue I wish to address in this paper is the role 1970s involved mainly attempts to replace Aboriginal language planning, in both the pre- and post-1972 forms of speech with English. Since such treatment periods, has played in the emergence and was deliberate, government-sponsored language development of a nontraditional Aboriginal change that focused on a defined problem, it could be language-Kriol. considered to have been language planning by definition. However, it could not be said to have been the characterized by formulation and evaluation of The emergence and spread of creole optimal alternatives, and members of the community affected did not have opportunity for input through A creole came into existence in, the River the political process (cf. Rubin and jernudd 1975; Roper area of the Northern after the Jernudd 1982). Territory shortly establishment of an Anglican mission in 1908. The situation changed significantly in 1972 when Pidgin had been present in the area for some thirty-five years the Australian government announced a new policy prior to the arrival of the missionaries, and the that allowed Aboriginal children the right to have emergence of the creole occurred a their primary education in their own language rather following period of violence that had extreme social and than in English only (see Sandefur 1977). Under this linguistic for the of the new policy, the consequences Aboriginal groups Roper Aboriginal language problem needing River area. treatment is still perceived by most non-Aboriginal The adults of these were people as being the lack of English competence. The groups typically multilingual, fluent in each other's treatment, however, no longer demands the becoming languages over the course of a lifetime of for elimination of Aboriginal languages. In addition, the meeting ceremonial and other purposes each The to planning process relevant to specific Aboriginal year. fifty children who attended the school at the a deal of from the seventy languages requires great input mission, however, were forced into contact with other speakers of the language. children whose languages they had not yet had time to The language policy change took place in the learn. Their parents could communicate with other context of broader policy and practice changes in the adults by speaking languages, but the children could not. What they had in common was the English pidgin *'I'be author is a member of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, P 0 Benrimah, NT. 5788, Australia. (Continued on page 2) used between Aboriginal and European people and soeiolinguistie situations of the last decade that have the English they were hearing in school. With this been instrumental in bringing about the rise in status limited input, this younger generation, in the course of the ereoles. I will limit my discussion here to the of their lifetimes, created the creole, manipulating the two most significant developments that have directly lexical resources available to them and drawing on affected the creole-namely, the establishment by the linguistic universals to create a language that catered Northern Territory Department of Education of a to their communicative needs (Harris and Sandefur bilingual education program using the language in the 1984:15). school at Bamyili and the undertaking by the Summer Creole emerged at Roper River in spite of the efforts Institute of Linguistics (SIL) of a Bible translation of the missionaries to it out. stamp The mission had project in the language. an active language policy that discouraged the use of The use of the language in a school program and focused on pidgin teaching Aborigines to speak brought with it official government recognition of the correct English. Many of the Aborigines who grew up creole as a legitimate language, a recognition that at the original mission did in fact learn to speak filtered down to creole speakers themselves. The English fluently. English did not, however, supplant school program has also helped raise the status of the the created for their first language they language. language by giving it the name Kriol. This provided The emergence and development of creole at Roper the language with an identity and helped reduce River were not direct of the consequences language prejudices against the language due to the negative treatment activities of the Anglican missionaries. They connotations of its previous names (e.g., pidgin or had applied their language policy at all their missions, bastardized English). but it was only at Roper River Mission that it was The SIL translation project has been involved in unsuccessful. At Emerald River Mission on Groote raising the status of Kriol primarily through the Eylandt 200 kilometers to the northeast, for example, dissimination of information about the nature and no creole ever emerged. A creole failed to develop extent of the language and its implications for there because the of sociolinguistic context the education and communication. Prior to the beginning community was such that there was no need for a of the project, very few linguistic or soeioliriguistie creole to develop. The Groote Eylandters already had studies had been made of the language. Language their own language, and they had no need to develop planning relating to Kriol was based on virtually no a first language in the mission community. objective information about the language. 511, The creole is not restricted to the Roper River area therefore focused much attention during the 1970s on but is currently spoken by an estimated 20,000 basic field research and documentation of the Kriol Aborigines in about 150 Aboriginal communities in situation, the three states of north Australia. A complex of social changes brought about by World War II was largely for the unintentional of the responsible emergence Corpus planning creole as a first language in most of those communities. No language corpus planning activities were directed at Knot until the early 1970s. Nun-Kriol Status planning speakers have, of course, always informally affected the expansion of the Kriol lexicon. For example, Until the 1970s the creole was almost universally stockwork has been assimilated by Aborigines into held in low' esteem by non-Aboriginal people as well as their contemporary lifestyle. As a consequence, the speakers themselves. Commonly it was viewed as vocabulary associated with stoekwork has been being a structureless, bastardized version of English incorporated by Aborigines into their Kriol speech. that was capable of being used for only the barest of Most of the corpus planning development of Kriol communication, a form of speech that hindered the has arisen from the SIL Kriol Bible translation project cognitive development of its speakers. The attitudes of and the Batnvili Kriol bilingual school program. Their creole speakers toward their language have effects in increasing the expressive power of Kriol are significantly changed during the last decade with an evident in three main areas. increasing number of them publicly identifying with Firstly, SIL and Banìy ili School have worked the creole. Many non-Aboriginal people have also together with Kriol speakers in developing a written accepted the creole as a legitimate language in recent mode for Kriol. Most of the direct influence of years. There has been, in fact, a dramatic rise in the non-Aboriginal people on the written mode relates to status and social standing of the creole since 1972. the development of orthography. Non-Kniol speakers I have elsewhere (Satidefur 1984) discussed in detail have also encouraged the development of various the many-faceted aspects of the sociopolitical and written styles, but it is Kriol speakers themselves who 2 Language Planning Newsletter 9 Volume 11 0 Number are doing the writing and thereby developing the Future development particular styles of writing. Because virtually all Kriol writers to date first obtained their literacy skills in Kriol have to English, the inflence of English style in Kriol literature Many speakers expressed opposition the of Kriol. This is not surprising, for is clearly evident Some Kriol writers show signs, development what de Rieux about creole in the however, of not being constrained by English writing (1980:268) says is also for Kriol: "The dominant rules. Seychelles applicable group, speaking the dominant language, [has] Secondly, although standardization has not been managed to persuade the creole-speakers that their overtly planned, it is generally supposed that the 'speech' [is] so inferior in status as to be a development of'a written Kriol literature will have a 'non-language'.'' standardizing effect upon the language. It should he 'there is an increasing number of Kriol speakers out, however, that Kriol literature is still very pointed who are themselves from the attitudes much in an and limited to freeing negative incipient stage relatively toward their which the white Australian few communities. The effect language Aboriginal standardizing dominant culture has them. of Kriol literature therefore the impressed upon During depends upon the last few two and continual of the of literature and its years significant growing groups growth body of Kriol have These distribution.

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