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Minority languages and language revitalisation 83 It is merely a highly desirable contributory stage, one that is usually at a considerable distance from the nexus of intergenerational mother tongue transmission and that is even indirectly tied back to that nexus only with considerable foresight and ingenuity. (Fishman 1991: 105) Particular scepticism is also directed at the teaching of the minority language (stage 4). Mindful no doubt of the Irish situation, where the compulsory teaching of Irish did not stem its decline, Fishman’s point is that while teaching the threatened minority language certainly makes a valuable contribution – by developing literacy, by extending the language’s functional range, by conferring status, by raising awareness of its historical and ongoing cultural value, it does not always, or even often, feed into the intergenerational transmission process, and is therefore insufficient for the language’s revival. With this many writers would agree, including Baker (1993, 2001, 2002, 2003a), who points out, with respect to Welsh language schooling, that there is a danger that the language will become a school-only language divorced from the ‘familyneighbourhood-community experience’. For long-term survival, Baker (2003a: 97) concludes, the language needs a range of support mechanisms operating before and after schooling: ‘bilingual education cannot deliver language maintenance by itself’. Yet Fishman may go too far in playing down the role of bilingual schooling. Welsh language teaching, for example, has made a substantial contribution to the revival of Welsh – disseminating knowledge of the language more widely, raising its status, changing perceptions and creating employment opportunities for Welsh speakers. It has also helped recruit new speakers to the language, and thereby enlarged the pool of speakers – native but also non-native – capable of passing the language on to their children. But, of course, as Jones (1998a: 353) points out, the crucial question remains of whether they will in fact choose to do so. Similar remarks might be addressed to Fishman’s pessimism regarding the impact of minority language broadcasting and media (stage 2): ‘Xish media are really a weak reed … for RLS [reversing language shift] to lean upon substantially’ (Fishman 1991: 107). True, they do not contribute directly to intergenerational transmission but they do bring the language to the attention of a wider audience, and help associate it with modernity. The impact, then, is almost entirely symbolic, but, where a language has previously been stigmatised, symbolic enhancement – in so far as it changes attitudes – is a useful contribution This is signalled by Moal (2000: 126), who acclaims the recent establishment of a private, Lorient-based digital TV channel broadcasting in Breton (TV-Breizh), and Williams (1995: 6), the former head of S4C programming (the publicly funded Welsh language TV channel), who points out that: while the normalization of a language in its geographical area is of prime importance at this particular time, its acceptance by the people as part of living culture is crucial. This is why its representation in the audio-visual media as communicating a contemporary living culture is crucial to the act of survival.
84 Language Planning and Education Another aspect of the GIDS scale that has attracted comment is the relationship of the stages to each other. Fishman (1991) speaks of the scale as ‘diachronic quasiimplicational’, suggesting thereby, as O’Riagain (2001: 195) notes, a temporal sequencing such that certain stages are, or have to be, attained prior to others. In his 2001 volume, however, no doubt in response to misinterpretations, Fishman is more explicit, declaring that language revitalisation is not ‘a step-by-step from the bottom upward effort’, nor should it be worked on in ‘a lock-step stage-by-stage progression’ (2001: 467). He adds some lines later that ‘multistage efforts … are not contraindicated’, a clarification that brings his interpretation into line with revitalisation work carried out with Irish (O’Riagain 2001), Quechua (Hornberger and King 2001) and Welsh (Baker 2003b), in all of which cases a range of measures to promote the language (e.g. through the media, teaching, economic development etc.) have been implemented more or less contemporaneously. Provided that the fundamental desideratum of intergenerational transmission is kept in mind, this seems sensible since in so difficult an endeavour as language revitalisation actions may well need to be taken simultaneously, in a mutually reinforcing manner. It is difficult to disagree, then, with Hornberger and King’s (2001) view that the GIDS stages are best seen as offering a useful heuristic for identifying priorities and links rather than as a detailed programme of action. Moving on, we come to what is perhaps the GIDS framework’s most notable omission – its inattention to the economic basis for language revival. One of the reasons for language shift in the first place is parents’ perception that the threatened language no longer has sufficient labour market value to be worthwhile transmitting. It follows that revitalisation efforts need to strengthen the economic incentives for retaining the language – alongside cultural and integrative incentives. As Baker (2002: 231) says: The more a minority language can be tied in with employment, promotion in employment, and increasing affluence, the greater the perceived value of that language. More than individual choices are involved, however. Languages exist in, and are sustained by, communities of speakers, and to the extent that communities and their social networks are affected by socio-economic and employment changes, so too is the vitality of its language. A good example might be the Gaeltacht areas of Ireland, whose small farm economy – up to the 1950s – supported localised social networks favourable to the maintenance of Irish (O’Riagain 2001: 208). Thereafter, however, socio-economic changes within the communities – a growth of non-agricultural employment opportunities, increased commuting to towns, changing recreational patterns – all contributed to a fundamental redrawing of social networks, which, in turn, impacted adversely on Irish maintenance. The implications for language revitalisation planning seem clear: if a community’s language use patterns have a socio-economic base, then revitalisation efforts need to tie in with other areas of social and economic policy whose focus may not be language but nevertheless affect it. Indeed, they cannot be kept separate, even from,
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