Gibson Ferguson Language Planning and Education Edinburgh ...

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Minority languages and language revitalisation 85 say, town and country planning, for, as Aitchison and Carter (2000: 149) note, issues of housing and land use can have significant cultural and linguistic ramifications – as, for example, when a new housing estate, providing mainly for in-migrants, is erected in a rural Welsh-speaking area. No doubt it is considerations such as these that impel Williams, C. to assert that ‘sound language planning is holistic in nature’ (1991b: 315). In similar vein, both O’Riagain (2001: 213) and Baker (2001: 83) approvingly echo Bourdieu’s (1991: 57) comment that: those who seek to defend a threatened language … are obliged to wage a total struggle. One cannot save the value of a competence unless one saves the market, in other words, the whole set of political and social conditions of production of the producers/consumers. We conclude, then, that the GIDS scale has heuristic value, but gives insufficient weight to economic variables – to a ‘linguistic market’ affected by economic as well as political forces. 4.2.2.2 Ethnolinguistic vitality and language revitalisation A second influential framework in the language revitalisation field, seen by some (e.g. Bourhis 2001) as complementary to the GIDS scale, is Giles, Bourhis and Taylor’s 1977 model, or framework, of ethnolinguistic vitality; vitality being defined here as ‘that which makes a group likely to behave as a distinct and collective entity within the intergroup setting’. Because groups with higher levels of ethnolinguistic vitality have better prospects of survival as a distinctive linguistic-cultural collectivity than those with lower levels, Giles et al.’s 1977 framework of structural variables affecting ethnolinguistic vitality assumes considerable significance, and is therefore, displayed in Figure 4.1. On the left-hand side are demographic factors divided into two subcategories: numbers and distribution. The former encompasses the basic features of population change – growth or decline in absolute numbers as affected by birth rates, patterns of immigration/emigration and exogamous or endogamous marriages. The latter refers to the concentration and distribution of group members in particular geographical locales and their proportion relative to the entire population. Concentrations of speakers in an area where they constitute a high proportion of the population has long been acknowledged as one factor favourable to language maintenance. Institutional support and control factors in the centre refer to the degree to which the ethnolinguistic group is represented in, and has control over, institutions at community, regional or even state level, for example in the media, civil administration, education, commerce and industry. ‘Formal’ here denotes the extent to which group members have decision-making powers within institutions, and ‘informal’ refers to the degree of lobby influence exercised by the group. Clearly, language groups with higher levels of institutional support and control have better prospects for enhancing their vitality.
86 Language Planning and Education Demographic factors Numbers – absolute birth rate – mixed marriages – immigration – emigration Distribution – concentration – proportion – territory Ethnolinguistic vitality Institutional support and control factors Formal Informal – government services – education – media – industry/business – religion – culture Figure 4.1 Structural variables affecting ethnolinguistic vitality (after Giles, Bourhis and Taylor 1977) Status factors – Economic status – Social status – Socio-historical status – Language status (internationally and locally) Finally, on the right of the diagram are the status factors, which divide into economic status, the degree to which the group has influence in the economic life of the region or nation; social status, which refers to the prestige of the group and its associated language; socio-historical status, the prestige of the group over time; and language status within and outside the region, which refers to the degree of politicolegal recognition of the language of the group. While the three clusters of factors are partially independent in that a group may be strong on, say, demographic factors but weak in status, Giles et al.’s (1977) essential point is that they combine to affect the overall level of ethnolinguistic vitality. As such, the framework makes a useful contribution to the diagnosis of the situation of linguistic minorities, and has been drawn on by various commentators – for example, Aitchison and Carter (2000), who exploit it to organise their discussion of the revival of Welsh in recent decades. There are weaknesses, however. In particular, the framework seems more useful as a descriptive than as an explanatory device, as it does not indicate how the various factors may vary in weight in particular cases; nor does it inform us how they interact to produce particular language shift or maintenance outcomes in different settings. For this, we need more nuanced historical and sociological accounts. Furthermore, as Baker (2001: 72) points out, several of the factors (e.g. institutional control) do not admit easy measurement, and may be difficult to operationalise for purposes of empirical investigation. We conclude, then, that while the ethnolinguistic vitality framework is a useful complement to the GIDS scale for describing the situation of linguistic minority groups and identifying areas of weakness, it does not by itself illuminate underlying processes or suggest a detailed programme for revitalisation efforts.
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