ISSN: 2157-4898; EISSN: 2157-4901
© 2014 IJLS; Printed in the USA by Lulu Press Inc.
Introducing the Folk Linguistics of Language Policy1 Nathan ALBURY, University of Oslo, Norway
Even without professional linguistic training, individuals of a speech community engage in language policy. They interpret and apply folk knowledge and beliefs about language to give life to language policies, and even create policy to solve local language dilemmas. These individuals are, by default, folk linguists. Folk linguistics examines the many ways folk without linguistic training perform linguistics as a science, but in the case of language policy folk linguistics has been confined to investigating the sociocultural dynamics of polities. While this remains valuable, I propose positioning language policy more holistically within the folk linguistics research agenda. This offers an exciting paradigm to examine not only what the folk believe about language policy matters, but also what folk knowledge exists about language policies and how knowledge and beliefs are applied by folk linguists to perform language policy. To explore the salience of this repositioning, I reflect on instances where I observed folk linguists of language policy in the civil service and consider the contributions a folk linguistic approach may have made.
Keywords: Folk Linguistics; Language Policy; Belief-Driven Commentary;
Ethnographic Commentary; Māori
1. Introduction
It has long been accepted that language policy as a field of inquiry extends far beyond the official discourses of authorities. Instead, language policy also encompasses shared frameworks about managing language as they are understood, executed and even created by a much greater range of actors in society, such as individuals, families and communities who are tasked to regulate local language affairs. A key difference, however, is that unlike official language policy makers and planners who have presumably attained a level of linguistic training that qualifies them to carry out their duties, these
1 This work was partly supported by the Research Council of Norway through its Centres of Excellence funding scheme, project number 223265.
individuals, families and communities are in the vast majority of cases neither linguists nor employed in a professionally linguistic capacity. Their inexpert status in linguistics, however, does not prevent them from drawing on their folk knowledge and beliefs about language to carry out, and even design language policy. They routinely decide how, when and where to use language and, in effect, solve language problems. These inexpert linguists are by default folk linguists of language policy.
I therefore suggest that positioning language policy as an explicit topic of folk linguistic research offers much merit. To date, folk linguistics has commonly, and very appropriately, contributed descriptions of language beliefs and ideologies that have contextualized and augmented language policy illustrations. Ethnographic perspectives have also analyzed sociocultural interpretations and appropriations of language policy to examine social organisations about language and bottom-up responses to policy directives.
Neither approach is, however, foundationally linguistic, not moves beyond belief and culturally-oriented analysis of language policy situations. Applying an explicitly folk linguistic lens to language policy, however, would allow researchers to discover the machinery of language policy, from a primarily linguistic perspective, as it is enacted by non-linguists. This stretches folk linguistic research about language policy beyond belief-driven or ethnographic commentary—which find their genesis in the sociology of language or linguistic anthropology—to include the nature and application of folk linguistic knowledge for the purposes of language policy activity—which finds its genesis in applied linguistics. To illustrate the proposal, I will reflect on instances where I have personally observed non-linguists interpreting, implementing or creating language policies in the workplace during my tenure in the New Zealand and Australian civil services and on how folk linguistic research may have helped to deconstruct the deliberations and decisions of individuals I observed.
2. What is folk linguistics, and why study it?
Folk linguistics is, in simple terms, the study of the folk doing, and talking about, linguistics as a branch of folk science. Parents draw on inexpert medical knowledge to ease the ailments of a sick child, and residents in earthquake-prone cities explain to newcomers the geological mechanics of their fault line. In doing this, they need not rely on any qualification in medicine or geology. In the same way, the folk claim and apply knowledge about language and linguistics. While linguistics is an academic discipline, discussions and applications of linguistic knowledge are not exclusively the activities of trained linguists. To the contrary, language, linguistic phenomena and the pursuit to resolve linguistic problems are of broad interest to people and communities generally. In New Zealand, for example, one might hear the
folk claim that English is the most difficult language in the world to learn, or that my daughter wouldn’t learn English properly if I raised her bilingually. Of course, trained linguists would be quick to discount these assertions, but the point is that what the folk claim to know about linguistic topics—their folk linguistic knowledge—is of scholarly interest. Beyond possessing knowledge, the folk also express beliefs about specified features of language and linguistics: they might express attitudes to specific languages, accents or dialects, or perhaps evaluations about the desirability of bilingualism, or even of language policy. Their dispositions may even serve as windows to a community’s language ideology. Folk linguistic research is therefore interested in what the folk know in linguistics regardless of the empirical accuracy of this knowledge, what they feel about such topics, and potentially, how that knowledge and belief is enacted to perform linguistics.
2.1
.
Folk linguistic research to dateInterestingly, researching what the folk have to say about language is a relatively recent endeavor. As McGregor (2001) explains, albeit “ordinary language users” are commonly the informants or subjects of descriptive linguistic research, “their contributions to linguistic argument and theory in general have not been much explored” (p. 480). However, the 1964 Sociolinguistics Conference at the University of California, with Hoenigswald’s call to research not only what people say, but also how people react to what people say, served to accelerate interest in folk linguistics (Niedzielski &
Preston, 1999, p. 2). This is especially the case since the 1990s, where American scholar Dennis Preston has taken scholarly leadership with a view to show that “folk information about language . . . is essential to the sociolinguistic research enterprise” (Preston, 1993c, p. 182).
Preston himself has focused much attention on applying a folk linguistic lens to dialectology (see for example 1986, 1993a, 1993b, 1993c, 1996b, 2002;
2011). He has solicited and revealed what the folk know, and feel about, dialectal variation in the United States and about where the ‘best’ American English is perceivably spoken according to respondents in different regions.
Preston’s innovation, applied in his study of 147 respondents in south eastern Michigan (1996), was to solicit this knowledge by asking respondents to draw on a map of the United States where they believe different dialects are used and to indicate, using a degree of difference scale, how different or similar the variations are. With the aid of computational analysis, Preston developed a generalized dialect map of the United States as it was understood through the folk knowledge of his Michigan respondents. Further studies modeled on Preston’s work have appeared, such as Benson’s (2003) folk dialectology maps of Ohio and Pearce’s (2009) work on perceived dialectal variation in north west England. The sociolinguistic value of folk dialectology may be
obvious as it concerns enactments of perceived speech boundaries. However, the socially and culturally-sited nature of folk linguistic research is of broader interest in the social sciences, such as where folk dialectology reveals discursive identities, solidarities or marginalization.
Moving beyond dialectology, the scholarship has also looked to language acquisition as a fertile ground for folk linguistics: Chavez (2009) researched the perspectives of German language learners in the United States through a mixed-method approach of a questionnaire and interviews. In doing so, she sought to reveal what language learners claimed to know about German, including the linguistic distance between German and English, before and after the students commenced language study, and then compared these vis- à-vis the expert knowledge of the language teachers. In 2013, Pasquale and Preston (2013) provided an update on an ethnographic folk linguistic study of what language learners and teachers of languages in American high schools and universities believe about their task. This research, using a discoursal approach, is revealing “conflict between teacher and student beliefs, and those between folk opinion and the prevailing or ‘received’
linguistic/pedagogical scholarship” (Pasquale & Preston, 2013, p. 173). Again, the potential impact of these studies is significant: collecting folk perspectives about language learning connects “individual and communal-cultural beliefs with motivation and subsequent actions” (Chavez, 2009, p. 1). Importantly, this knowledge can be harnessed to improve pedagogical strategies.
Expanding the field even further, specific texts have been positioned as objects of folk linguistic study. Verschik and Hlavac (2009) used folk linguistics to examine Estonia’s 2008 Eurovision song Eto Leto Svet. The interest here is that the Estonian song was actually sung as an imitation of the Serbian language. The researchers investigated the techniques used by the Estonian song writers to imitate and stereotype Serbian, along with subsequent folk linguistic attitudes in Estonia, Serbia and Croatia. Among many pertinent findings, Verschik and Hlavac (2009) identified an ideological resistance to bilingual songs in all three nations (p. 55), and significant claims amongst Estonians to understanding Serbian words on the basis of its proximity to Russian (p. 56). Furthermore, Serbians did not view incoherent or unlikeable Serbian lyrics as derogatory in the same way, for example, as examples of language-mocking in other societies (p. 61). Llewellyn and Harrison (2006) undertook a double-barreled examination of corporate communications and resulting folk linguistic interpretations of employees.
This included analysing how the folk interpret the linguistic practices of managers, such the use of specific lexicon, modality and transitivity, along with folk attitudes to these linguistic practices. The research discovered that the folk’s beliefs about the nature and characteristics of corporate language generally influenced how they described and responded attitudinally to
specific managerial communications.
Schiffman’s (1995, 2006) discussions about mythology as folk knowledge are especially illustrative of why folk linguistic perspectives deserve attention.
Schiffman conceptualizes speakers in a language community as subscribers to a unique linguistic culture, which he sees as the collective “ideas, values, beliefs, attitudes, prejudices, myths, religious strictures, and all other cultural
“baggage” that speakers bring to their dealings with language from their culture” (Schiffman, 2006, p. 112). Folk linguistic research, Schiffman (1995, p. 10) claims, is a sound empirical basis for discovering a linguistic culture, including its language myths. He especially discusses how folk myths can be so programmatic that they shape and constitute local truths, even where these are, indeed, just myths. One such myth existed among the French who have long been wholeheartedly convinced that an ancient, official, purist and pervasive French language policy existed, when in fact this did not actually exist until the Loi Toubon of the 1990s. This myth, or folk linguistic knowledge inspired by a tradition of fervent discourse pitched against non- standard languages on French territory, was so widespread and believed that it made for de facto legislation. Formalizing the arrangement was probably unnecessary because the power of folk knowledge had filled its place (Schiffman, 2006, pp. 117-119). Linguistic myths also prevail elsewhere: in New Zealand, an anthropological examination of letters to the editor of the Otago Daily Times revealed, along with a range of non-linguistic commentary, what Bayard (1998) saw as socially harmful folk mythology. This included that the term Pākeha (used to refer to New Zealanders of European descent) means “white maggot” (p. 11), that New Zealand English was decaying through linguistic mutilation (pp. 8-9), and that New Zealand pupils needed a
“logical language” like Latin to help them think (p. 8). It is of course unlikely that such myths are idiosyncratic but instead percolated through a socio- cultural filter, such as Schiffman’s notion of linguistic culture. Preston (1996a, p. 56) agrees, and proposes that socioculturally-oriented perspectives about language influence folk linguistic talk sooner than purely linguistic factors.
Such myths are therefore manifestations of a belief system that gives life to those myths in the first place: the mythical French language laws reflected a staunch ideology of French linguistic nationalism; the New Zealand examples may have reflected characteristics of race relations in Otago at that time, along with the perpetuation of European language ideologies that could not afford prestige to language in New Zealand.
Folk linguistic commentary, with its objective truths, opinions and even myths, can therefore serve as a valuable locus for discovering beliefs and ideology. Indeed, folk linguistic knowledge and beliefs form local, shared, operable, socially- and culturally-situated logics, meaning folk linguistic commentary can be seen as not just the phenomenon of an individual, but a
window to programmatic systems of linguistic belief and understanding in a community. Consequently, and as a strong rationale for the discipline, folk linguistic commentary is more than just linguistically interesting: its gives expression to the cultures, workings and ideologies of a community as they relate to language. As with any language ideology research, folk linguistic talk may be valuable to a much broader range of social science endeavours.
2.2
.
Defending the disciplineAs a discipline that is necessarily interested in inexpert knowledge, the validity of folk linguistics as a research agenda is not without criticism. A commitment by expert linguists to empirically-unfounded knowledge may, on the face of it, seem futile. Mainstream linguistics has oftentimes been sceptical of the folk linguistics research trend—especially as it concerns folk linguistic knowledge—on the basis that inexpert linguistic commentary is
“uninteresting, uninformed, unqualified and even dangerous” (Wilton & Stegu, 2011, p. 1). An eliminative position, Paveau (2011, pp. 48-51) explains, would argue that folk knowledge is based in the folk’s unfounded common sense, rendering folk knowledge ripe for elimination by empirical fact. Other arguments propose that folk linguistic knowledge may be impoverished or inaccessible, a point upon which Niedzielski and Preston (2003) reflect at some length. The concerns here are that as non-experts, the folk may lack sufficient linguistic vocabulary to describe a particular linguistic phenomenon, and relatedly, that the folk’s knowledge is too difficult to penetrate. This is especially a risk in research that uses a direct interrogative approach that seeks folk awareness of highly specialised structural language matters, such as syntactic rules or modality. Similarly, if the folk are directly asked to reveal knowledge or attitude, then they may be inclined to “take positions which present an optimum image of self” (Niedzielski & Preston, 1999, p. 9). By the same token, the observer’s paradox suggests that when respondents are aware their language behaviour is being investigated, the behaviour itself risks becoming unnatural (Wei, 1994, pp. 83-84). A folk linguistics researcher might instead prefer an ethnographic approach in order to reveal folk knowledge in a more naturalised research environment. Even here a risk arises that ethnographic observations lead to a researcher’s account of language behaviour rather than to folk linguistic knowledge itself.
A risk not to be understated is that respondents themselves may claim to possess no knowledge, nor have formulated opinions about the research topic. By this I mean that the impact of folk linguistic research is necessarily limited to the extent respondents have cast their minds, if at all, to the topics under discussion. For example, research in New Zealand regarding the differences between the New Zealand and Australian varieties of English would likely result in substantial folk linguistic knowledge and attitude
because this phenomenon is well traversed in New Zealand’s folk discourse generally. This would unlikely be the case where research concerned a discursively less prominent topic, such as the language genealogy or syntactic rules of the Māori language. Depending on the researcher’s intentions, it is possible, however, that an absence of knowledge or opinion may in itself be a valuable folk linguistic discovery. This might help to understand the parameters and biases of folk linguistic knowledge because it would table not only what the folk know and believe, but also what areas of linguistics the folk appear not to engage.
Preston (1996a) has reflected on the limits and accessibility of folk linguistic knowledge. He proposes that the linguistic awareness of the folk is examinable in various modes including, in the first instance, the extent to which knowledge about any given linguistic topic is available to the folk.
Within this mode, a continuum exists from the folk simply having no comment to make on a particular topic, to the folk only discussing some matters if they arise or are carefully described by the researcher, to the folk speaking about certain topics as common knowledge. The extent of availability may of course differ between individual respondents but would likely be influenced by the prominence of the linguistic item in the community’s general discourse. This would explain, for example, why the New Zealand folk might provide more commentary about English in Australasia, than on te reo Māori genealogy.
The second mode concerns the accuracy of what the folk say about a given topic. As already reiterated, empirical correctness is in itself not a primary concern of folk linguistic research. Nonetheless, the degree of accuracy can of course constitute an important empirical finding and will characterize the folk’s talk from a linguist’s perspective. The third mode concerns the level of detail to which the folk engage a linguistics topic, such as whether the folk offer specific or generalized discussion. This may appear to be closely related to the first mode, but this need not be the case. For example, folk knowledge about the differences between English varieties in Australasia may be highly available, but the narrative about the linguistic matters it inspires may be generalized rather than detailed in terms of describing specific lexical or phonological phenomena. Finally, the fourth mode concerns the folk linguists’
control. This is primarily applicable to topics regarding the phenomena of language production and assessing whether respondents can reproduce with control that particular linguistic feature. This might include, for example, whether a respondent is able to sustainably imitate a particular accent or dialect, or only describe it in general terms (Preston, 1993c, 1996a).
Preston’s modes prove that the nature of folk linguistic talk is, on closer observation, necessarily complex. As long as humans use language, they remain more than likely to reflect on this capacity and talk about it as a social and scientific phenomenon. Researching these reflections makes valuable
contributions to understanding the phenomenon of language in society. For applied linguists, this is not in the least because their discipline is, as a matter of principle, concerned with the “language-related problems of non-linguists”
(Wilton & Stegu, 2011, p. 1). Paveau (2011) explains that, a soft realist position, drawing on the folk psychology tradition, finds folk commentaries about language “acceptable and can be incorporated into linguistic theory since they provide exact perceptive and organizing descriptions of language, but they cannot serve as a basis for a general theory of language” (Paveau, 2011, p. 51). An, integrational position, which Paveau uses to describes Preston’s epistemological approach, views folk knowledge as legitimate because “if the folk talk about language, they must, of course, know (or least believe they know) about it” (Niedzielski & Preston, 1999, p. 10).
The premise of these positions is not that it matters whether what the folk say is empirically accurate, but that folk knowledge constitutes “dynamic processes which allow non-specialists to provide an account of their worlds”
(Preston, 1994, p. 285). Careful analysis of folk linguistic commentary can, in fact, “show patterns and consistencies of folk belief” (Preston, 1994, p. 286).
This is true not in the least because the parameters of folk linguistic knowledge establish the core basis upon which the folk talk about language topics, share linguistic knowledge, and make language-related judgments. To return to the example folk commentaries offered at the beginning of this chapter, believing English is an inherently arduous language could, for example, serve to legitimate why a new migrant to New Zealand faces difficulty learning English or even to overstate, on shaky linguistic grounds, the achievement of mastering English as a foreign language. Similarly, folk knowledge about bilingualism and child cognition could, despite the encouragement of linguists and language communities, lead families to abandon linguistic diversity in favour of monolingualism. Because these perceived truths can inform action, Wilton and Stegu (2011) go so far as to say that “investigating folk linguistics is particularly salient for anyone calling himself or herself ‘an applied linguist’” (p. 2).
2.3
.
Defining the folkIt is clear that what the folk say about languages and linguistics is a fertile ground for research, and that folk talk may offer insights beyond the realm of linguistics alone, but who exactly are these folk? This, Paveau (2011) suggests, is “one of the thorniest issues in folk linguistics” (p. 41). Negative connotations association with the term folk make the folk linguistic tradition cognizant of the risk it is seen to hold a derogatory disposition to the knowledge of non-experts. This especially comes about where folk knowledge is perceived as akin to lay theories and any associations that lay theories are for the uneducated masses. Preston (2011), identified already as
a lead scholar in folk linguistics, reiterates that he “definitely do[es] not use the term to refer to rural, marginalized, less educated, or romanticized (‘quaint’) groups” (p. 15). Instead, the term folk linguist is best defined as a non-linguist; a person who is not an expert in linguistics but who talks about linguistic topics (Preston, 2011, p. 15). This underscores the central purpose of folk linguistic research as not a quest to assess the empirical accuracy of what the folk think, but to examine what the folk say and why.
This alludes to an attractively fixed dichotomy between the folk and linguists, but in reality the infinite ways the folk can engage in linguistics inevitably means the extent and quality of folk linguistic knowledge is diverse (Wilton &
Wochele, 2011, p. 55). The very nature of being an expert or non-expert can undergo critical examination, because expertise can be discursively constructed rather than acquired by qualification (Wilton & Stegu, 2011, p. 2).
In other words, if a non-expert is perceived as an expert, and afforded that title, then he/she may assume an expert status despite an absence of professional qualification. The discourse of the media and politics, for example, is well-placed to facilitate such a transformation. In current times, this is perhaps especially evident in other folk sciences, such as where a politician speaks with authority—not necessarily with scientific training—on a topic such as climate change. If discourse legitimates that commentary, a truth may be discursively created that the politician has more than folk knowledge. By the same token, it would be difficult to argue that any scientist’s own commentary is in all respects absolutely void of his/her folk knowledge or folk interpretations (Paveau, 2011; Preston, 2011), especially where the folk knowledge is programmatic to the extent it accents the expert’s research and discourse. The dichotomy between folk and linguist can, therefore, become blurred.
Secondly, the distinction is also made complex by many more members of society drawing on linguistic-related knowledge than linguists alone. Rather than maintaining a dichotomy between folk linguists and expert linguists, Paveau (2011, pp. 42-43) proposes a graded continuum of interchangeable linguistic roles based on insights from her research La Langue Française—
Passions et Polémiques (Paveau & Rosier, 2008). At one end of this continuum are professional linguists. At the other end are ordinary speakers as the most folk of linguists. A range of intermediary roles exist in between including amateur linguists, who may be lawyers using semantic analysis to undertake their work, or logophiles or glossomaniacs and other language fanatics who create new words for a language’s lexicon. Others include writers and essayists who apply prescriptive and descriptive language, correctors/editors/proof-readers who use prescriptive grammars, and ludo- linguists such as comedians who draw on linguistic phenomena to furnish their humour. At least some quasi-expertise in linguistics is, in different ways,
an aspect of these intermediary roles. Importantly, amateur linguists may not have acquired their linguistic knowledge through traditional linguistic training. The continuum is instrumental in that it helps to articulate the various ways in which the folk—expert, non-expert, and in-between—might do linguistics.
However, some form of dichotomy between linguist and non-linguist is practical because the essence of folk linguistics is, after all, to differentiate between those who have everyday knowledge about linguistics, and those whose knowledge is more than that (Wilton & Stegu, 2011, p. 5). As such, it is useful to define a non-linguist as someone who is not trained (academically or by industry) nor working in the field of linguistics (Wilton & Stegu, 2011;
Wilton & Wochele, 2011). This of course does not resolve the constructivist argument that the folk may sometimes appear like experts and that experts may use folk knowledge, nor account for Paveau’s scope of quasi-linguist roles. It does however provide some workable shape to folk linguistics projects. This is not to say that the discursive and fluid nature of folk and expert roles should be ignored; to the contrary, folk linguistic researchers can remain aware of this ambiguity exists and that it may play out in their field work.
3. Folk linguistics and language policy: an incomplete relationship
Although it is conceivable that a folk linguistic lens can be applied to any linguistic topic the folk might talk about (Niedzielski & Preston, 2009, p. 149), this has not yet been comprehensively pursued in the case of language policy.This is in itself interesting, because without a doubt, folk linguistics is thematically akin to language policy research: this is especially so where the topics of folk linguistic inquiry concern belief-driven perspectives of, or engagements with, matters of managing language in society. In these cases, folk linguistic commentary may be so heavily steeped in language beliefs and organisation that the findings of folk linguistic research may actually become
“indistinguishable from the ethnography of language” (Preston, 2011, p. 16).
Because beliefs naturally rise to the surface in folk linguistic commentary, the link between language policy and folk linguistics is clear. The language beliefs and ideologies of a community are a crucial and essential component of language policy parallel to the efforts of any authority to manage a language situation with laws and official policies. This is largely because sociolinguistic norms and expectations manifest in speech communities even where official policy is absent. Spolsky (2001, 2004, 2009) sees language beliefs a parallel, independent aspect of language policy next to language management and actual sociolinguistic practices exactly because societal and cultural rules about language can be so influential that they behave like official policy. In effect, language ideology is “language policy with the manager left out, what
people think should be done” (Spolsky, 2004, p. 14), separate to what official policy prescribes because it may be perspective and directive of actual language behaviour (Blommaert, 2006, p. 241). As such, to comprehensively examine language policy, one should not look exclusively at official policy discourses: these would only tell part of a language policy story. A language policy narrative is incomplete if void of insights into language ideology. Folk linguistics is, therefore, well-placed to fill that void.
Accordingly, folk linguistics can be seen as long having contributed to language policy in two distinct ways: by researching the language beliefs of the folk, such as through psycho-sociology (Baker, 2006), and through ethnographic studies of communities engaging or appropriating policy (Canagarajah, 2006). Both may reveal language beliefs and, if these beliefs are sufficiently programmatic, ideology. Examples are numerous, especially because projects have commonly used folk linguistic approaches, even if researchers have not overtly labeled their work as belonging to the folk linguistics agenda but in fact revealed folk linguistic perspectives on language policy. For example, Marley (2004) investigated the attitudes of high school students and teachers towards French, Arabic and bilingualism following a series of institutional language policy changes instituted by the Moroccan government, and found ideologies that are supportive of bilingualism as a policy pursuit. Similarly, McEwan-Fujita (2010) conducted interviews in Scotland to reveal ideologies as they affect Gaelic language revitalization, and discovered a language socialization process that was increasingly accommodating to English and reduced opportunities for Gaelic. The achievement of such studies is that through a direct folk linguistic approach—
even if these projects were not tagged as belonging to the discipline—they solicited and illustrated language ideologies of a polity.
The ethnography of language policy, first proposed by Hornberger and Johnson (2007), offers an indirect approach to revealing community-level responses to language policy and attendant beliefs. Its value is that research can shift away from focusing on power and policy as “necessarily monolithic”
(Johnson, 2009, p. 155) and instead examines bottom-up responses to top- down interventions by authorities to develop “grounded theories about language as it is practiced in localized contexts” (Canagarajah, 2006, p. 153).
Because “the processes of implementing policy can be multifarious, and the outcomes of policy surprising” (Canagarajah, 2006, p. 154), ethnography is valuable for understanding the organisation of relationships in response to language policies. It is also useful for analysing the nexus between macro- level policy objectives and micro-level appropriation, as well as any disregard or rejection of policy. King’s (2000) ethnographic study of two Saraguro communities in Ecuador examined community-level negotiations between the Spanish and Quichua languages within the context of Quichua language
revitalization. This ethnography succeeded in revealing disparate language attitudes and ideologies that impact on the pathways of Quichua language revitalization as a project, including beliefs that are inimical to language revival. Johnson (2009, p. 156) provided an ethnographic account of how language acquisition policies are interpreted and appropriated at a Philadelphia School District with reference to policy agents, goals, processes, discourses and social and historical context. This led him to conclude that combining critical analyses of language policy texts with empirical data collection on policy interpretation and appropriation is best practice in the ethnography of language policy (Johnson, 2009 p. 156). In any case, these examples illustrate ethnography as a salient approach to augmenting language policy research.
Neither researching language beliefs directly nor the ethnography of language policy are, however, synonymous with the folk linguistics of language policy I propose. These two paradigms draw only in part on the folk linguistics tradition in that they seek to reveal social and cultural contexts and beliefs, but not folk knowledge or performance per se. This is obvious, given studies of language attitude draw on social psychology, and the ethnography of language policy takes its lead from anthropology. These perspectives contextualize language policy with traditions, pressures and biases that exist beyond the realm of any official policy but that shape community responses to managing language. Neither are, nor claim to be, foundationally linguistic in approach or theory. They are generally descriptive and do not by definition examine non-linguists accessing linguistic knowledge nor doing language policy as a topic of linguistics. Folk attitudes may hint at what knowledge the folk hold, but its primary concern is with disposition. Ethnographic observations concern community enactments, structures and beliefs, meaning knowledge of linguistics may not in itself rise to the research surface. This is not to say that research of language attitude and ethnography should be disregarded in the folk linguistics of language policy. To the contrary, researching attitudes remains essential to discovering folk linguistic beliefs and the ethnography of language policy will still reveal how language policies are received or rejected at the collective level. However, psycho-sociological research and the ethnography of language policy cannot fulfil the role of, nor replace, the folk linguistics of language policy, but instead may be seen as part of it.
4. Introducing the folk linguistics of language policy: beliefs, knowledge, and performance
For this reason I propose the folk linguistics of language policy as an alternate, complementary and foundationally linguistic approach to examining language policy. In the same way that language policy can be studied through a range of psycho-sociological, ethnographic, political, post-modernist, geo-linguistic
and economic lenses (see Ricento (2006) for an overview of theoretical and methodological perspectives), folk linguistics also offers an equally concrete platform. It extends the relevance of folk linguistics to language policy towards also examining what the folk claim to know about language policy and how they might perform it. This sees language policy as an activity of linguistics to be examined from a linguistic perspective, rather than first and foremost from the perspective of another social science. Sociocultural context is of course critical to understanding the nature of any language policy, however this enhanced approach allows language policy to be studied from the perspective of folk science. It is hoped this advances Preston’s (1994) suggestion, as a leading scholar in folk linguistics, that “a modern research programme [will take respondents] down path which they have not previously trod upon” as “a productive way to reveal folk concepts” (p. 285).
The performance element of my proposal is salient. The folk linguistic tradition focuses heavily on folk linguistic beliefs and knowledge, and I suggest that folk linguistic performance also warrants special attention in language policy. This element is not new to folk linguistics: Preston’s work (1993c, pp. 182-186) on how the folk imitate others’ dialects necessarily concerned how folk knowledge is performed to mimic language behaviors, such as accent and dialectal difference. However, performance can of course apply more broadly to include how the folk use and give life to knowledge in their lives. For example, does folk dialectology inform decisions to choose specific lexicon and phonology to ensure one is understood when visiting a different dialect area, and when would this be appropriate? Similar questions can be applied to folk perspectives of second language acquisition: how might preconceived ideas about a language inform how a student engages in prescribed study material, and how might an educator address folk belief to improve learner motivation? This paper is not the place to answer these specific questions, but the relevance of considering performance in folk linguistic research is, clearly, pertinent to applied linguistics.
Folk linguistic performance may even be conceptually clearer in the case of language policy: language policy theory has already reminded us that language policy agents are vast and many. Above all, the makers and performers of language policy need not be linguists, but are commonly non- linguist community-members given language management is as much about polity as it is policy (Schiffman, 1995, p. 2). This means that the folk may not only know about language policies and have opinions, but may also take centre stage as language policy creators and implementers. This creates a performance element to the folk linguistics of language policy.
If folk linguistics is to concern itself with folk linguistic beliefs, knowledge and performance of language policy, then research opportunities are as vast as the
folk’s engagement with language policy and a researcher’s interest. In a review of language policy and folk linguistics literature, example contributions that have neared the folk linguistics of language policy I envisage are from Palmer (1974) and Sandel (2003). Palmer discusses the precarious situation of language teachers vis-à-vis language policy. In particular, he proposes that because language policy making authorities often comprise non-linguists, they often “use language policy to maintain repression and confusion because they are ignorant of the ecology of language” (Palmer, 1974, p. 225). In turn, he suggests that language teachers are often oblivious to real-world language politics, such as the relationship of English to colonialism and the marginalization of non-standard vernaculars.
As a remedy to this, he proposes that language teachers develop relevant linguistic knowledge by mandatorily undertaking training in language policy (Palmer, 1974). Sandel investigated the lingering impacts of nationalist Mandarin language policy between 1945 and 1987 in Taiwan, which strictly forbade students from using local languages and dialects such as Tai-gi.
Sandel’s approach was to conduct a series of interviews with young adults, parents and grandparents to solicit their perspectives about the impacts of policy. He revealed pervasive beliefs that former language policies in schools have shaped language practices in familial domains today (Sandel, 2003, p.
547). It is clear, however, that neither study amounted to the folk linguistics of language policy. Palmer’s is critical, rather than soliciting, of the folk linguistic knowledge (or lack thereof) that he attributes to language policy makers and proposes how knowledge can be transformed. Sandel’s approach is innovative in that he sought folk observations about the practical consequences of a language policy, however his primary focus was to solicit accounts of “personal experiences of learning to speak Tai-gi at home and Mandarin at school” and of “the languages parents use (or used) in the home with their children and the reasons, or language ideologies, that support this language choice”(Sandel, 2003, p. 534). This means that while he uncovered some folk linguistic beliefs and narratives that explain folk linguistic performance, folk linguistic knowledge was in itself not a focus.
5. Folk linguists of the civil service
In the absence of existing research, I am drawn to reflect on my observations at previous workplaces in the New Zealand and Australian civil services as locations ripe for researching the folk linguistics of language policy. Firstly this is because the workplaces—central policy offices in Wellington and Canberra—confronted linguistic diversity in internal and in external business, meaning questions of language policy would at some point arise. Secondly, the workplace predominantly comprised non-linguists and the subject matter did not concern language policy in any official capacity. Thirdly, the role of a
civil servant as a non-linguist of language policy strikes me as particularly dynamic: the civil servant not only brings to this role knowledge and beliefs to solving local language problems, but is also expected to represent and enact the interests of government. This brings a dynamic richness to the folk linguistic knowledge, beliefs and performance of civil servants.
5.1
.
A reflection from New ZealandIn New Zealand, the government explicitly encourages its civil service to operate bilingually in English and te reo Māori and to develop the bilingual proficiencies of staff. The New Zealand Cabinet has in turn directed public organisations to develop and implement their own te reo Māori language plans. The policy impetus, as reported by the Te Taura Whiri (Māori Language Commission) (n.d.), resides in an interest and obligation to revitalize te reo Māori, to raise its status in high profile language domains, and to respond to an increasing demand for te reo Māori services from a growing Māori population. The staff of Te Taura Whiri can be considered professional linguists by nature of their mandated role to create a linguistic product. The responsibility of creating and delivering te reo Māori language plans, and guiding civil servants in executing those plans, has however been delegated to non-linguists in non-language policy oriented organisations.
This creates two salient examples where the folk linguistics of language policy becomes a worthy research project. In the first instance, research could examine the process of non-linguists in corporate areas of public organisations developing and implementing Te Taura Whiri’s and Cabinet’s language policy directives. Research might encompass, for example, how the linguistic task is interpreted and how pertinent linguistic themes, such as language revitalization and national language policy as linguistic concepts, are described and understood both before and after the task. It might seek to reveal whether and how folk linguists engaged linguistic resources to support their work. It might also seek to identify their sociolinguistic assumptions about their organisations, such as existing language proficiencies, perceived attitudes to language and revitalization, and how these assumptions guided the development and implementation of language plans. It might also concern whether, and how, the folk linguists planned to address any prevailing language ideologies that seem inimical to te reo Māori, what priority the folk linguists afforded language policy within their broader range of responsibilities, and what the folk believed to be an effective local language plan. Research such as this would strike at the heart of the machinery and execution of language policy because it would analyze the steps non-linguists take as implementers of national language policy.
Related to this as a second worthy example is the role of agency staff engaging
(or not) the national language policy and local language plan. I am especially reminded of a colleague’s farewell function where he delivered a considerably lengthy farewell speech in what appeared to be advanced te reo Māori. What was striking was that the colleague was an Asian-New Zealander with no Māori ancestry, that the audience of his speech were all non-Māori, that no one in the audience was known to have more than basic te reo Māori proficiency, that the office operated only in English, and that his colleagues and I were mostly unaware of his language competency. Three salient lines of inquiry immediately come to mind: why had my colleague delivered his speech in te reo Māori despite the fact the audience would not understand?
What factors might my colleague have reported that led him to apparently not previously use te reo Māori in that workplace? What actions and narratives might explain why the speech fell on deaf ears even though New Zealand public agencies were supposedly on a pathway to operational bilingualism?
Folk linguistics can help to answer these questions. Of course, an ethnographic perspective is no doubt valuable, as that could explore a hypothesis that my colleagues may have appropriated and facilitated a monolingualist language ideology that exists in New Zealand whereby the relationship between English and te Reo Māori is one where English is “the default language, the ‘working’ language for normal life in New Zealand”
(Harlow, 2007, p. 208) and the indigenous language primarily fills an iconic or ceremonial role. However, this ideology would be at odds with the Ministry’s local language plan at the time: rather than confining te reo Māori to an iconic status, the plan was committed to providing staff opportunities to language classes and encouraged te reo Māori in everyday business.
This juxtaposition opens the event to broader folk linguistic research than ethnography alone. Critical language policy research might argue that the language plan was destined to fail because language policy cannot succeed if it does not “conform to the expressed attitudes of those involved” (Lewis, 1981, p. 262). However, folk linguistics could more deeply interrogate the knowledge, deliberations and actions of individuals that manifested into a situation that favoured an ideology over an official policy. For example, research could reveal whether individual non-linguists even knew about the official language policy and plan, what regard they had for these, and how relevant they considered them to their needs. An interview with the departing colleague might have revealed what he knew about the monolingualist ideology, whether he endorsed or challenged this, whether he enacted it as a preeminent guide to workplace language, or whether another linguistic motivation was at play. It might also have sought to identify the assumptions he held about his sociolinguistic environment, about the impacts of his decision and whether he engaged material linguistic and cultural resources to support his speech as an act of language policy. Interviews with
other staff might have investigated, for example, their beliefs and knowledge about the relevance and accessibility of in-house language learning opportunities, and the policy impetus for te reo Māori acquisition and revitalization. It is clear from the many questions inspired by my colleague’s language decision that folk linguistic inquiry could have helped to deconstruct the folk deliberations and activity that gave life to language policy.
5.2
.
A reflection from AustraliaMy final reflection is from the Australian civil service. Although English is not legislated as the official language, it is without question the national working language and is complemented by numerous indigenous and immigrant—
especially Asian and European—languages. Australian language policy has, in general terms, promoted linguistic diversity as a valuable resource: this has included an impetus for language skills to advance Australia’s economic and international interests by fostering and teaching community languages (Ingram, 2003), and for protecting Aboriginal languages which suffered gravely under colonization. Other than a de facto understanding that the civil service operates in English, language policy in Australia’s public administration primarily concerns the responsiveness of government services to Australia’s linguistic and cultural diversity in the interests of access and equity (Australian Government, 2011). For civil service organisations, this makes for a situation whereby the government’s official policy narrative advocates for harnessing linguistic diversity in Australia’s interests but is silent on language within public administration.
How then might an individual manager in the Australian civil service address linguistic diversity in the course of his or her duties? I am reminded of my own position in a team whose responsibilities included bilateral case management with international partners. In the case of one particular telephone-based discussion with an office in the Netherlands, it was clear the vocabulary and grammar pertaining to the subject matter presented discernible challenges for our Dutch counterparts when using English as a foreign language. Continued breakdowns in communication meant a new linguistic arrangement was imperative if the negotiations, which predominantly favoured Australian interests, were to progress. Given I possessed relatively advanced proficiency in Dutch and had estimated that proficiency to be higher than the English of my Dutch counterparts, it seemed logical to suggest to my manager—a monolingual English-speaking Anglo- Australian—that I conduct the discussions in Dutch. My manager declined this proposal, requested the Dutch counterparts engage the services of an interpreter, and proposed continuing the negotiations in English at a later date. Unless the manager had specific reason to avoid delegating the negotiations to a staff member, the decision appears grounded in the folk
performance of a language policy. The manager seemingly deemed it imperative that negotiations be in English and that the Dutch comply with that language requirement. This conviction appeared so resolute that the manager’s decision could not even be influenced by the nuances of the situation, such as that it was Australia—not the Netherlands—that had a vested interested in the outcome of the negotiations, that Australia had a Dutch language resource at hand, and that interpreting services would incur costs for the very audience the manager sought to persuade.
An obvious first task for a folk linguistic researcher would have been to identify whether the manager’s decision did in fact amount to language policy, or whether other objectives were at play. Assuming the decision was one of language policy, the goal would be to discover the folk linguistic deliberations that led to the decision he took, including what policy or ideology, if any, the manager had explicitly or implicitly in mind in the absence of a formal local language framework. This would also have motivated an inquiry about whether the manager was even aware that the government explicitly encouraged linguistic diversity to advance Australia’s international interests and whether this at all resided in his deliberations. As in the New Zealand example, it is again possible that the decision-making centered in a monolingualist ideology whereby only English should serve as the working language of Australian workplaces. If this is the case, folk linguistic research might have revealed whether that ideology was shared locally, or whether the manager’s approach was individualised and prompted by personal experiences or belief. It may also have sought to reveal whether—and why—
the manager consciously avoided linguistic diversity in the negotiations, or whether for example, as a self-professed monolingual, the idea that an Anglo- Australian staff member might possess advanced foreign language proficiency had simply passed him by. More pragmatically, research might have sought to reveal the strategy the manager pursued to execute his language policy decision, how he formulated that strategy, and how he recounted the event as a non-linguist’s lived experience. The transnational context of the discussions, which my manager apparently saw as necessarily situated in English, might also have flavored the folk linguistic investigation. The preference for English in international dialogue, even though both English and Dutch were practical options, might have encouraged a line of inquiry about participation in English as the ultra-successful international language, beyond its domestic status in Australia. In drawing possible connections between folk linguistics, a monolingualist ideology, and conceptualizations such as De Swaan’s (2001) whereby central language speakers (such as the Dutch) acquire supercentral languages (such as English) as lingua francas, research might have discovered that the manager simply assumed that negotiations should adhere to an international business culture that prescribes English—his native language—
as its medium, even if it disadvantaged the Dutch in this case. In this sense, the option to carry out Australian government affairs in a language other than English was perhaps so foreign to the international business culture as the manager understood it that he immediately reacted by upholding linguistic norms as he knew them.
Reflections in the aftermath of the event may also have been valuable in examining any impact the language policy decision might have on local folk linguistic ideas and behaviour moving forward. This could have included, for example, how successful and appropriate the manager considered his decision and execution of language policy, how he perceived his decision to have been appropriated by the Dutch, and whether and why the event may or may not a set precedent for future language choice decisions. Discourse might even have revealed whether attendant ideologies, such as about the value of linguistic diversity in government business, were revalidated, were nuanced or even shifted subsequent to the event. The scope of inquiry makes it clear, to my mind, that folk linguistics could have examined the machinery of language policy as it was performed and recounted by a non-linguist enacting and creating ideology and policy to solve a language problem.
6. Conclusion
The discussion I have offered is not an exhaustive summary of the opportunities that the folk linguistics of language policy might offer.
Conversely, it is hoped these few reflections illustrate not just the salience of applying a folk lens to language policy, but also the linguistically-oriented nature, and breadth and depth of inquiry, that a folk linguistic approach might inspire. The traditional role of folk linguistics in language policy and the ethnography of language policy, both of which valuably augment language policy narratives with the sociocultural perspectives of the folk, no doubt remain relevant. My thesis is that when language policy becomes a defined topic of folk linguistic examination, unique opportunities arise to critically examine what the folk know about language policy matters and how this, along with folk belief, is harnessed to perform language policy. This advances the relevance of folk linguistics to language policy beyond the belief-oriented research it has to date been confined to. In the very least, this adds to the body of research into the many ways non-linguists participate in the vastness of linguistic topics that folk research can conceivably encompass. This, to my mind, makes the folk linguistics of language policy an exciting research paradigm and a valuable contribution to applied linguistics.
The Author
Nathan Albury (Email: [email protected]) is a PhD candidate at the
University of Oslo, Norway, investigating and comparing the folk linguistic perspectives of youth in New Zealand and Norway on indigenous language revitalization as a policy project. His research interests include language policy, language ideology, folk linguistics, and language and globalisation.
References
Baker, C. (2006). Psycho-sociological analysis in language policy. In T. Ricento (Ed.), An Introduction to Language Policy: Theory and Method (pp. 210- 228). Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Bayard, D. (1998). White turnips and mythical Moriori: Combatting folk- linguistic and folk-anthropological myths in the popular press. New Zealand English Journal, 12, 6-20.
Benson, E. J. (2003). Folk linguistic perceptions and the mapping of dialect boundaries. American Speech, 78(3), 307-330.
Blommaert, J. (2006). Language ideology. In K. Brown (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics, Second Edition, (Vol. 6, pp. 510-522).
Canagarajah, S. (2006). Ethnographic methods in language policy. In T. Ricento (Ed.), An Introduction to Language Policy: Theory and Method (pp. 153- 169). Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Chavez, M. (2009). Learners' descriptions of German pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar: A folk linguistic account.
Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German, 42(1), 1-18.
Harlow, R. (2007). Māori: A Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.
Hornberger, N. H., & Johnson, D. C. (2007). Slicing the onion ethnographically:
Layers and spaces in multilingual language education policy and practice. TESOL Quarterly, 41(3), 509-532.
Johnson, D. C. (2009). Ethnography of language policy. Language Policy, 8(2), 139-159.
King, K. (2000). Language ideologies and heritage language education.
International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 3(3), 167-184.
Lewis, G. E. (1981). Bilingualism and Bilingual Education. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Llewellyn, N., & Harrison, A. (2006). Resisting corporate communications:
Insights into folk linguistics. Human Relations, 59(4), 567-596.
Marley, D. (2004). Language attitudes in Morocco following recent changes in
language policy. Language Policy, 3(1), 25-46.
McEwan-Fujita, E. (2010). Ideology, affect, and socialization in language shift and revitalization: The experiences of adults learning Gaelic in the Western Isles of Scotland. Language in Society, 39(1), 27-64.
McGregor, G. (2001). Folk linguistics, review of Folk Linguistics, ed. by N.
Nieezielski and D.R. Preston. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 20, 480-483.
Niedzielski, & Preston. (1999). Folk Linguistics (Vol. 122). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Niedzielski, & Preston. (2009). Folk pragmatics. In G. Senft, J.-O. Östman & J.
Verschueren (Eds.), Culture and Language Use (pp. 146-155).
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Palmer, J. D. (1974). Language ecology. TESOL Quarterly, 225-232.
Pasquale, M., & Preston, D. (2013). The Folk Linguistics of Language Teaching and Learning. In K. Drozdzial-Szelest & M. Pawlak (Eds.), Psycholinguistic and Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Second Language Learning and Teaching (pp. 163-174): Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
Paveau, M.-A. (2011). Do non-linguists practice linguistics?: An anti- eliminative approach to folk theories. AILA Review, 24(1), 40-54.
Paveau, M.-A., & Rosier, L. (2008). La Langue Française. Passions et Polémiques. Paris: Vuibert.
Pearce, M. (2009). A perceptual dialect map of north east England. Journal of English Linguistics, 37(2), 162-192.
Preston, D. R. (1986). Perceptual Dialectology. Dordrecht: Foris.
Preston, D. R. (1993a). Folk dialectology. In D. R. Preston (Ed.), American Dialect Research (pp. 333-377). Amsterdam: John Benjamins B.V.
Preston, D. R. (1993b). Two heartland perceptions of language variety.
"Heartland” English: Variation and Transition in the American Midwest, 23-47.
Preston, D. R. (1993c). The uses of folk linguistics. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 3(2), 181-259.
Preston, D. R. (1994). Content-oriented discourse analysis and folk linguistics.
Language Sciences, 16(2), 285-331.
Preston, D. R. (1996a). Whaddayaknow?: The modes of folk linguistic awareness. Language Awareness, 5(1), 40-74.
Preston, D. R. (1996b). Where the worst English is spoken. In E. W. Schneider (Ed.), Focus on the USA (pp. 297-360). Amsterdam: John Benjamns B.V.
Preston, D. R. (2002). Perceptual dialectology: Aims, methods, findings. In J. V.
M. J Beerns (Ed.), Trends in Linguistics Studies and Monographs (Vol.
137, pp. 57-104). Berlin: de Gruyter.
Preston, D. R. (2011). Methods in (applied) folk linguistics: Getting into the minds of the folk. AILA Review, 24(1), 15-39.
Ricento, T. (Ed.). (2006). An Introduction to Language Policy: Theory and Method. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Sandel, T. L. (2003). Linguistic capital in Taiwan: The KMT's Mandarin language policy and its perceived impact on language practices of bilingual Mandarin and Tai-gi speakers. Language in Society, 32(4), 523- 551.
Schiffman, H. (1995). Linguistic Culture and Language Policy. New York:
Routledge.
Schiffman, H. (2006). Language policy and linguistic culture. In T. Ricento (Ed.), An Introduction to Language Policy: Theory and Method (pp. 111- 125). Malden: Blackwell.
Spolsky, B. (2001). Towards a theory of language policy. Working Papers in Educational Linguistics, 14, 2007.
Spolsky, B. (2004). Language Policy: Cambridge University Press.
Spolsky, B. (2009). Language Management: Cambridge University Press.
Te Taura Whiri. (n.d.). Public Sector Retrieved 2 September 2013, from http://www.tetaurawhiri.govt.nz/english/services_e/public_why.shtml Verschik, A., & Hlavac, J. (2009). Eto Leto Svet: Estonia's 2008 Eurovision song
as a source of folk-linguistic controversy. Monash University Linguistics Papers, 6(2), 47-64.
Wei, L. (1994). Three Generations, Two Languages, One Family: Language Choice and Language Shift in a Chinese Community in Britain. Clevedon:
Multilingual Matters.
Wilton, A., & Stegu, M. (2011). Bringing the "folk" into applied linguistics: An introduction. AILA Review, 24(1), 1-14.
Wilton, A., & Wochele, H. (2011). Linking past and present: A view of historical comments about language. [Article]. AILA Review, 24(1), 55- 67.
