scholarly journals Enduring and Contemporary Code-Switching Practices in Northern Australia

Languages ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 90
Author(s):  
Jill Vaughan
Keyword(s):  
Linguistic Diversity ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
Indigenous Languages ◽  
Northern Australia ◽  
Language Practices ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Linguistic Purism ◽  
Local Languages ◽  
Australian Languages

In Maningrida, northern Australia, code-switching is a commonplace phenomenon within a complex of both longstanding and more recent language practices characterised by high levels of linguistic diversity and multilingualism. Code-switching is observable between local Indigenous languages and is now also widespread between local languages and English and/or Kriol. In this paper, I consider whether general predictions about the nature and functioning of code-switching account for practices in the Maningrida context. I consider: (i) what patterns characterise longstanding code-switching practices between different Australian languages in the region, as opposed to code-switching between an Australian language and Kriol or English? (ii) how do the distinctions observable align with general predictions and constraints from dominant theoretical frameworks? Need we look beyond these factors to explain the patterns? Results indicate that general predictions, including the effects of typological congruence, account for many observable tendencies in the data. However, other factors, such as constraints exerted by local ideologies of multilingualism and linguistic purism, as well as shifting socio-interactional goals, may help account for certain distinct patterns in the Maningrida data.

scholarly journals PANDEMIC, LAW, AND INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES IN PAKISTAN

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-16
Author(s):  
Muhammad Hassan Abbasi ◽  
Maya David
Keyword(s):  
Police Officers ◽  
Linguistic Diversity ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Indigenous Languages ◽  
National Language ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
The Law ◽  
Local Languages

Pakistan is a multilingual state with 74 languages (Siddiqui, 2019), with Urdu being its national language while English is its official language (Article 251 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan). However, the linguistic diversity, as per the law, has not been given proper status in Pakistan (Rahman, 2002). In the wake of Covid-19 pandemic, the role of medical health professionals, local police officers, media persons and educationists to create an awareness about the precautionary measures to fight Covid-19 among the indigenous communities in different regions of Pakistan is important. However, there is no practice prescribed in the law, to disseminate awareness in the local languages. Moreover, as most of the lexical items regarding the pandemic have been borrowed, the shift to local languages is more than challenging. In urban areas, indigenous communities are aware of the precautions to be taken during this pandemic as they use the mainstream languages (Ali, 2017 & Abbasi, 2019.) However, in the rural and northern areas of Pakistan this is not so prevalent. Some language activists and concerned members of the community in different parts of the state took this opportunity to educate the masses and started an awareness campaign about coronavirus pandemic in local languages (posters in local languages and short video messages on social media and YouTube). Yet, linguists and community members have not been able to work with many indigenous languages, which Rahman (2004) lists in his study, and these speech communities urgently need the required information in their respective heritage languages. Such small steps by community members and NGOs in providing necessary information in local languages suggest that proper education in the mother tongue can protect communities in times like this. The government has to protect endangered and indigenous languages by an effective law-making process that actively encourages the use of local languages and helps provide information in their respective languages in such situations as this pandemic.

scholarly journals The Discourse of Friday Sermon in Indonesia: A Socio-Cultural Aspects and Language Function Studies

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-238
Author(s):  
Kundharu Saddhono ◽  
Ani Rakhmawati
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
Specific Structure ◽  
Language Function ◽  
Oral Discourse ◽  
Cultural Aspects ◽  
Local Languages

This research attempted to explain the Friday sermon by analyzing the structure of its discourse, the selection and composing of its topics, the functions of its codes and code-switching, the function of its speech acts, and the characteristics of its language and specific terms. By using descriptive and qualitative, this study found that the Friday sermon contained oral discourse which has a regular and specific structure. The strategies of the composition of the topics consisted of quotation, storytelling, usage of popular expressions. Whilst the forms of the codes and code-switching involve Arabic, Indonesian, local languages [Javanese], and English languages. In addition, the utterances of the sermon contain all forms of speech acts and various terms appeared in the sermons indicating that the Friday sermon functions as a register or usage of language in a particular field.

Disengagement From Schools: Possible Solutions

2022 ◽  
pp. 002205742110387
Author(s):  
Eureka Baneka Mokibelo
Keyword(s):  
Social Integration ◽  
Ethnic Minority ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
Indigenous Languages ◽  
Local Languages

This article investigated possible solutions to disengagement from schools by ethnic minority learners in Botswana. Disengagement is a concern for educationists and researchers. The study used qualitative approach to investigate the problem. The reason for disengagement include cultural misfit. The theory of social integration was used to understand the problem under study. The findings indicated that there must be consultation with farm owners and they use local languages for teaching. The article concludes that there is a need to liaise with stakeholders to review certain practices to encourage retainment in schools such as mobile schools and the use of indigenous languages.

Language studies by women in Australia

2020 ◽  
pp. 367-400
Author(s):  
Jane Simpson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Indigenous Languages ◽  
Language Documentation ◽  
Indigenous Australian ◽  
Language Studies ◽  
Language Study ◽  
Family Demands ◽  
Analytic Skills ◽  
Australian Languages

Few women contributed to documenting Indigenous Australian languages in the nineteenth century. Brief accounts are given of six settler women who did so: Eliza Dunlop (1796–1880), Christina Smith (‘Mrs James Smith’; 1809?–1893), Harriott Barlow (1835–1929), Catherine Stow (‘K. Langloh Parker’; 1856–1940), Mary Martha Everitt (1854–1937), and Daisy May Bates (1859–1951). Their contributions are discussed against the background of forty-four other settler women who contributed to language study, translation, ethnography, or language teaching. Reasons for the relative absence of women in language documentation included family demands, child raising, and lack of education, money, and patrons, as well as alternative causes such as women’s rights. Recording Indigenous languages required metalinguistic analytic skills that were hard to learn in societies that lacked free education. Extra obstacles for publication were remoteness from European centres of research, and absence of colleagues with similar interests.

Time, diversification, and dispersal on the Australian continent

2020 ◽  
pp. 116-141
Author(s):  
Nicholas Evans
Keyword(s):  
Linguistic Diversity ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
Indigenous Languages ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Human Occupation ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Australian Family ◽  
Australian Continent ◽  
Time Diversification ◽  
Colonial Contact

Sahul, the ancient continent uniting Australia and New Guinea, is the only inhabited continent uniquely occupied by small-scale societies until colonial contact. And Australia (only separated from New Guinea for 10,000 years) is the only continent exclusively occupied by hunter-gatherers. This makes Sahul, and Australia, crucial for understanding how language has evolved through our deep human past. This chapter addresses three enigmas: first the discrepancy in deep linguistic diversity and typological disparity between the Australian and New Guinea hemi-continents (1 maximal clade in Australia, over 50 in New Guinea), second the apparent relatedness of all Australian indigenous languages despite continuous human occupation for 60,000 years with no external intrusions, and third the recent spread of the Pama-Nyungan branch of the Australian family over seven-eighths of the continent, most likely in the mid-Holocene?

M. Ishtiaq, Language shifts among the scheduled tribes in India: A geographical study. (MLBD Series in Linguistics.) Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, Pp. xii, 183. Rs 450. $32.00.

2001 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 332-335
Author(s):  
Roland J.-L. Breton
Keyword(s):  
Language Shift ◽  
Population Group ◽  
Indigenous Languages ◽  
Important Process ◽  
Geographical Study ◽  
Complete Study ◽  
Gradual Disappearance ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Linguistic Behavior ◽  
Local Languages

This book, by a geographer, is a rather complete study of the linguistic behavior of an important population group, the so-called Scheduled Tribes of India, numbering 68 million people in 1991, and more than 90 million today, i.e. as much as the population of Germany – but a population split into distinct units, spread in various patches of territory all over India, where they speak more than 60 indigenous languages. Spatially and culturally divided, they have also long been socially marginalized, and despite many official schemes of development, they are still undergoing a very important process of deculturation. The most noticeable manifestation of this process – the language shift that is the subject of this book – had, at the period of the author's fieldwork, already affected nearly 60% of this population and is leading to the gradual disappearance of local languages in many places.

scholarly journals Prosodically Conditioned Consonant Duration in Djambarrpuyŋu

2019 ◽  
pp. 002383091982660
Author(s):  
Kathleen Jepson ◽  
Janet Fletcher ◽  
Hywel Stoakes
Keyword(s):  
Initial Position ◽  
Northern Territory ◽  
Indigenous Languages ◽  
Pitch Accent ◽  
Data Word ◽  
The World ◽  
Disyllabic Words ◽  
Phonological Phrase ◽  
Australian Languages ◽  
Segment Duration

Cross-linguistically, segments typically lengthen because of proximity to prosodic events such as intonational phrase or phonological phrase boundaries, a phrasal accent, or due to lexical stress. Australian Indigenous languages have been claimed to operate somewhat differently in terms of prosodically conditioned consonant lengthening and strengthening. Consonants have been found to lengthen after a vowel bearing a phrasal pitch accent. It is further claimed that this post-tonic position is a position of prosodic strength in Australian languages. In this study, we investigate the effects of proximity to a phrasal pitch accent and prosodic constituent boundaries on the duration of stop and nasal consonants in words of varying lengths in Djambarrpuyŋu, an Australian Indigenous language spoken in northeast Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, Australia. Our results suggest that the post-tonic consonant position does not condition longer consonant duration compared with other word-medial consonants, with one exception: Intervocalic post-tonic consonants in disyllabic words are significantly longer than word-medial consonants elsewhere. Therefore, it appears that polysyllabic shortening has a strong effect on segment duration in these data. Word-initial position did not condition longer consonant duration than word-medial position. Further, initial consonants in higher-level prosodic domains had shorter consonant duration compared with domain-medial word-initial consonants. By contrast, domain-final lengthening was observed in our data, with word-final nasals preceding a pause found to be significantly longer than all other consonants. Taken together, these findings for Djambarrpuyŋu suggest that, unlike other Australian languages, post-tonic lengthening is not a cue to prosodic prominence, whereas prosodic domain-initial and -final duration patterns of consonants are like those that have been observed in other languages of the world.

scholarly journals ‘Art for a New Understanding’: An Interview with Valerie Keenan, Manager of Girringun Aboriginal Art Centre

Arts ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 91
Author(s):  
Sally Butler
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Indigenous Languages ◽  
Northern Australia ◽  
Indigenous Art ◽  
Cultural Expression ◽  
Art And Culture ◽  
Aboriginal Art ◽  
Global World ◽  
Insight Into

A network of Indigenous art and culture centres across Australia play a significant role in promoting cross-cultural understanding. These centres represent specific Indigenous cultures of the local country, and help sustain local Indigenous languages, traditional knowledge, storytelling and other customs, as well as visual arts. They are the principle point of contact for information about the art, and broker the need to sustain cultural heritage at the same time as supporting new generations of cultural expression. This interview with Dr Valerie Keenan, Manager of Girringun Aboriginal Art Centre in northern Australia, provides rare insight into the strategies, challenges, and aspirations of Indigenous art centres and how the reception of the art impacts on artists themselves. It provides a first-hand account of how Indigenous artists strive to generate a new understanding of their culture and how they participate in a global world.

Linguistic interplay between Yoruba and English

English Today ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 51-53
Author(s):  
Grace Ebunlola Adamo
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
Important Data ◽  
Long Run ◽  
The Social ◽  
British Colonization ◽  
The Future ◽  
Yoruba Language ◽  
Local Languages

The purpose of this paper is to foreground the extent to which the English language has eroded the originality and purity of the Yoruba language. The main focus will be on code-switching practices, which I believe to be detrimental to Yoruba in the long run. Although linguists have long proposed a ‘leave-your-language-alone’ attitude (see Hall, 1950), there is little doubt that the effects of first British colonization and then globalization have changed the linguistic ecology of Africa. Few sociolinguists would deny that a people's language is a symbol of their identity and culture. In an important textbook in the field, Holmes (1992: 70) confirms that ‘Language is an important component of identity and culture for many groups, maintaining their distinct identity and culture is usually important to … self esteem.’ What are we then to make of the extensive code-switching that I will be documenting in this article? Linguists' tolerance has certainly extended to code-switching studies in Africa, from which much important data has been drawn. The main scholar in this area is Carol Myers-Scotton, whose two books on code-switching (1993a,b) were based primarily on her research in Africa and remain central to the field internationally. Scholars like Coupland and Jaworski (1997) propose that the use of mixed speech in a conversation is not necessarily a language defect but a sign of flexibility and creativity. Understanding the social, psycholinguistic and syntactic motivations for switching is one thing, but the applied linguist and educationist also has to ask serious questions about what this means for the future of local languages heavily implicated in code-switching.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document