IMPLICATIONS FOR THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM

Ultimately, questions of language rights are questions of language policy, and re-flect underlying assumptions about the nature of language as well as issues of power, equality, and access in society. As Tollefson (1991) noted:

The policy of requiring everyone to learn a single dominant language is widely seen as a common-sense solution to the communication problems of multilingual societ-ies. The appeal of this assumption is such that monolingualism is seen as a solution to linguistic inequality. If linguistic minorities learn the dominant languages, so the argument goes, then they will not suffer economic and social inequality. The sumption is an example of an ideology which refers to normally unconscious as-sumptions that come to be seen as common sense … such asas-sumptions justify exclusionary policies and sustain inequality. (p. 10)

The desire for simple solutions to complex problems and challenges is perhaps un-derstandable, but it is also dangerous, as the quote with which this chapter began makes clear. Tyranny is always better organized than liberty, but that is no reason to support it. Furthermore, the tendency to address rights issues as pragmatic or em-pirical matters, as is often the case, is also both misleading and wrong. The ques-tion, in short, is not whether instruction in the mother tongue is pedagogically most effective (although the evidence would suggest that it is), any more than whether capital punishment reduces crime—in both cases, fundamental human rights must be understood to remove the question from the empirical realm and move it to the normative realm. Only by placing the questions in the right discourse context can we hope to come to reasonable and justifiable solutions—and, at least in the case of language rights, we have a long way to go before this becomes the norm.

Finally, what does all of this have to do with the foreign language classroom?

As we suggested in chapter 3, the foreign language classroom is an ideal place to help students to begin to develop what can be called critical language awareness.

In other words, the study of language needs to include not only the communica-tive and cultural aspects of language, but also the often implicit political and ideological issues related to language (see Blackledge, 2000). Students need to understand the ways in which language is used to convey and protect social sta-tus, as well as how it can be used to oppress and denigrate both individuals and groups. Central to the discussion and, indeed, understanding of such issues is an understanding of the nature, purposes, and foundations of language rights. Lan-guage rights, like lanLan-guage attitudes, are inevitably going to be either challenged or reinforced in all educational settings, but arguably nowhere more signifi-cantly than in the foreign language classroom. The foreign language educator, in short, has a powerful and important role to play in ensuring that students become aware of language rights as a component of human rights, both in their own lives and in the lives of others.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. In this chapter, it is suggested that language rights are routinely ignored and violated, probably far more than are other human rights, and furthermore, that the most egregious violations of group and individual rights involve language rights. Why do you believe that this might be the case? What can individuals do about this situation?

2. Consider language attitudes in your own community. To what extent and in what ways do these attitudes reflect a positive appreciation of the lan-guage rights of others? How do they demonstrate a lack of understanding of language rights?

3. Explain in your own words why the case of Estonia might be considered to be very different from the other cases of violations of language rights de-scribed in this chapter. What does this particular case tell us about the na-ture and status of language rights? About the limits of language rights?

4. Some scholars have argued that language rights constitute only half of the equation, and that individuals and groups must also be understood to have language responsibilities. What do you think that such language responsibili-ties might be? What are the educational implications of your answer?

5. The issue of the language rights of the deaf is discussed in this chapter.

What do you believe are the implications of this discussion for deaf stu-dents with regard to studying a foreign language in the context of the pub-lic school?

FOCUS ON THE CLASSROOM

1. What language rights related to their native language do you believe that your students have in the context of the foreign language classroom?

2. What examples of issues of language rights related to the target language are appropriate topics for discussion in the foreign language classroom?

3. How is language used to discriminate against specific groups of people?

Can you describe a project that students in a foreign language classroom might undertake to investigate this question?

4. What role, if any, do proponents of U.S. English and similar movements propose for foreign language education?

5. How can foreign language education students contribute to community discussions and understandings of language rights?

NOTES

1. There are, broadly speaking, two quite different ways to view deafness. The domi-nant perspective in our society is grounded in the view that deafness is essentially a medical condition, characterized by an auditory deficit—that is, deaf people are people who cannot hear. Such a perspective, which has been labeled the medical or pathological view of deafness, leads naturally to efforts to try to remediate the def-icit. In short, this view is premised on the idea that deaf people are not only differ-ent from hearing people, but that they are, at least in a physiological sense, inferior to hearing people, in that hearing people can hear and deaf people cannot. If one accepts such a view of deafness, and the myriad assumptions that undergird it, then the only reasonable approach to dealing with deafness is indeed to attempt to remediate the problem—which is, of course, precisely what is done when one fo-cuses on the teaching of speech and lip-reading in education, relies on hearing aids to maximize whatever residual hearing a deaf individual may possess, and seeks to develop medical solutions to hearing impairment (such as cochlear implants). In other words, the medical or pathological view of deafness inevitably leads to ef-forts to try to help the deaf individual to become as like a hearing person as possi-ble. The alternative perspective for understanding deafness, which has been advocated by a growing number of deaf people as well as by small groups of hear-ing teachers, lhear-inguists, anthropologists, and others involved with the deaf, has been termed the sociocultural perspective on deafness (see Baker & Battison, 1980; Lane, 1984; Neisser, 1983; Reagan, 1990a; Stokoe, 1980; Wilcox, 1989).

Basically, the sociocultural view of deafness suggests that for some deaf people, it makes far more sense to understand deafness not as a handicapping condition, let alone as a deficit, but rather, as an essentially cultural condition. Thus, on the ac-count of advocates of this sociocultural view of deafness, the appropriate

compari-son group for the deaf is not individuals with physical disabilities, and so forth, but rather, would be individuals who are members of other non-dominant cultural and linguistic groups. In short, although the medical view of deafness would lead us to try to correct a deficit, the sociocultural view would lead us to efforts to fight for civil rights (see Shapiro, 1993, pp. 74–104).

2. Recognition of the deaf as a distinctive cultural and linguistic group in South Af-rica is rapidly developing. For example, early in 1996, the Language Plan Task Group was established by the Minister of Arts, Cultures, Science, and Technology for the purpose of advising him on the development of a coherent National Lan-guage Plan for South Africa. Eight subcommittees were appointed and informed a policy document published later that year. During this process, South African Sign Language emerged as a significant topic of discussion. Such was the prominence of the issues related to South African Sign Language that the entire final summit conference, which was attended by a number of deaf delegates, was interpreted in sign language. Further, sign language was explicitly mentioned in five out of eight subcommittee reports of the final report (Language Plan Task Group, 1996). Al-though there was considerable discussion about the status of South African Sign Language in the constitutional discussions, the constitution that was eventually approved, although recognizing South African Sign Language as a South African language, did not accord it official status.

8