Essay on grass-root theory of language shift
Language is fundamentally a tool for enhanced communication between speakers. The effectiveness of language maintenance should be addressed with this concept in mind. In their respective essays, Nancy Dorian and Joshua Fishman have outlined the varying degrees of language maintenance success. Though both very astute in their observations of how to approach preserving or reviving a particular language, they have not convincingly expressed the reasons why it should be done in the first place.
Most advocates of preserving threatened languages do not provide adequate reasons beyond the just because notion, often incorrectly assuming that the death of a certain ethnic language means the death of said ethnic group’s cultural heritage. Dorian and Fishman are no exceptions to this rule; both say that language maintenance efforts should be approached from below (at the grass roots level) as opposed to from above (government, institutions). There are, however, a few obvious questions that both articles pay lip service to at best, or completely ignore at worst. In studying the common ground between Dorian and Fishman and the concepts that they conveniently ignore, it will be seen that language maintenance efforts, by and large cannot be feasible.
Both Fishman and Dorian agree about grass roots language maintenance. This is perhaps the best way that language maintenance can succeed. It seems a consistent argument between them that the retention of a given language is best not imposed by government or institutional structures like the education system, as these are frequently populated and driven by speakers of the other language that, by its very presence and existence, is threatening the dying language. However, both Dorian and Fishman acknowledge that sometimes, assistance from these institutions can help. Dorian asserts, the emphasis of this paper thus far [is] on the difficulty and even in some circumstances the impossibility…
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Tags: Aboriginals, communication, ethnic group, globalisation, grass-root, language, language shift, speakers
