Language policy and literacy

Abderrhman El Aissati

University of Tilburg, The Netherlands

Themed-panel

The panel examines the relations between the macro-level of changing language policies in multilingual and multi-ethnic countries and the impact on the acquistion of literacy in primary school, adult literacy attitudes and acquistion in a first or second language, and teachers’ opinions on the changed educational policies.

East-Timor, a new nation and developing country in Southeast Asia, provides extraordinary possibilities for research on adult lieracy practices, values, teaching, acquisition, and skills in a multilingual context. East Timor has 16 languages and a large number of dialects (Hull, 2004; see map). From mid 16th century until 1975, the period in which East-Timor was colonized by Portugal, Portuguese was the official language. Immediately after East-Timor declared itself independent in 1975, it was occupied by Indonesia. Bahasa Indonesia became the official language during the 24 years long Indonesian occupation until 1999. After independence in 2002, East-Timor decided for Portuguese and Tetum as the country’s official languages, and for another 15 national languages to be valued and developed by the state. According to the Constitution of East-Timor, Bahasa Indonesia and English are accepted as working languages.

Eritrea, colonized by Italy, Great Britain, and Ethiopia until its independence in 1991, has nine officially recognized languages spoken by nine culturally distinct ethnolinguistic groups. The origins of the language policy in Eritrea are not only related to ideology and resistance but also to cultural arguments of uniting diverse cultural and linguistic groups in the country through the use of every group’s language in mass media and education.

The language and education policies have created literacy traditions in multiple languages and scripts. The status and use of the languages and the scripts, however, remains different. Tigrinya and Arabic are the working languages in the country, as the language policy does not recognize official language(s). Therefore, Tigrinya and Arabic, as the working languages, and Tigre, as the second largest group in the population, dominate the language landscape in the country.

Morocco presents a similar case to the previous two in that it also has a colonization history, after which important decisions had to be made with respect to language policy. After its independence from the French and the Spaniards in 1956, Morocco was clear in its language choice: arabic will be the excusive official language of the country, and the role of the languages of previous colonization should be minimized. There was no mention of Berber as a national language or minority language, and no prospect for making any room for this language.

However, in September 2003 teaching Berber in public schools became a reality. Among the crucial decisions that needed to made was the choice of a script. Berber had been written in all three scripts known in North-Africa, namely, the Tifinagh script (originally a Lybian script), the Roman script, And the Arabic script.

Objectives

The research on language policy and literacy covers a variety of topics, approaches and methodologies. From a language-policy point of view the choices of national languages, the choices of script and orthography for specific languages and the implemation of the language policy in primary education and adult literacy campaigns is relevant. From a social-cultural perspective literacy can be conceptualised as purposeful social practices, embedded in historically situated and continuously changing larger social, religious and cultural traditions. From a cognitive/linguistic and educational perspective (the acquisition of) literacy can be conceptualised as getting access to the meaning of print, i.e. learning the code that is used in a particular cultural context to represent speech by visual symbols. What this panel aims to achieve is discussing the impact of language policy on literacy from different angles and in different domains, avoiding exclusive focus on one strand of language policy or literacy research and striving for methodological pluralism.

Organisation

The panel will feature three presentations:

1. The presentation about the Eritrean project will relate the outcomes of the acquisition of literacy of 450 children in five different languages and three different scripts to the outcomes of a large scale survey on the uses of literacy and the attitudes to languages and script among 670 adults.

2. The presentation about East-Timor will analyse the recent language policy and present outcomes of an ongoing ethnographic multiple case-study.

3. The presentation about the research in Morocco will focus on the attitudes and opinions of about 100 teachers who have experienced the first two years of teaching Tamazigh in Tifinagh-script.

Discussants:

Kroon, Blommaert, Martin-Jones

References:

Asfaha, Y.M., Kurvers, J., & Kroon, S. (2006). Literacy Use and Instruction in Multilingual Eritrea. African Studies Bulletin, 68, 70-78.

Blommaert, Jan (1999), Language ideological debates. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter

Craats, van de, I., J. Kurvers, & M. Young-Scholten (Eds.), Low-Educated Second Language and Literacy Acquisition: Proceedings of the Inaugural Symposium Tilburg 2005 (pp. 69-88). Utrecht: LOT.

Dorleijn, G.J., Boumans, L., & El Aissati, A. (2005). Language in a Multicultural Neighbourhood in the City of Utrecht. In Utz Maas (Ed.), Sprache und Migration Vol. 26. IMIS-Beitrage (pp. 29-45).

Kroon, S. (2003), Mother Tongue and Mother Tongue Education. In: J. Bourne & E. Reid (eds.), Language Education. World Yearbook of Education 2003. London: Kogan Page, 35-48.

Kurvers, J., & Uri, H. (2006). Metalexical Awareness: Development, methodology or written language? Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 35(4), 353-367.

Martin-Jones, Marilyn; Jones, Kathryn (2000), Multilingual literacies : reading and writing different worlds Amsterdam: Benjamins