ARTICLES
Dirk Jacobs (103)
Alliance and betrayal in the Dutch orthography debate
Margit Waas (119)
First language loss: Reflex responses, repartee and sound symbolism
Mercedes Niño-Murcia (134)
Linguistic purism in Cuzco, Peru: A historical perspective
NOTES
Paul E. O'Donnell (162)
Languages policies and independence politics in Quebec
INTERLINGUISTICS
Mark Fettes (170)
Interlinguistics and the internet
REVIEWS (177)
Ulrich Lins, La dangera lingvo (Renato Corsetti);
Joshua Fishman (dir.), Ethnolinguistic pluralism and its discontents (Régine Lambrech);
Geolinguistics (Gaylord R. Haas);
Mauro A. Fernández Rodríguez and Modesto A. Rodríguez Neira (eds.), Estudio sociolingüístico da comarca ferrolá (Rodney Ball);
Mauro A. Fernández Rodríguez and Modesto A. Rodríguez Neira (eds.), Lingua inicial e competencia lingüística en Galicia (Rodney Ball);
Fernando F. Ramallo and Gabriel Rei Doval, Publicidade e lingua galega (Rodney Ball);
Sergio Salvi, L'Italia non esiste (Guy Héraud);
Lauri Hannikainen, Cultural, linguistic and educational rights in the Åland islands (Mauro Fernández);
Kristian Mynnti, The protection of persons belonging to national minorities in Finland (Mauro Fernández-Ferreiro);
William A. Kretzschmar, Jr. and Edgar W. Schneider, Introduction to quatitative analysis of linguistic survey data (G. Tod Slone);
Robert Paul Magosci, A new Slavic language is born: The Rusyn literary language in Slovakia (Sydney Schultze);
Jürgen Scharnhorst (Hg.), Sprachsituation un Sprachkultur im internationalen Verleich (Klaus Schubert)
Language Problems & Language Planning 21:2
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Alliance and betrayal in the Dutch orthography debate
Dirk Jacobs
In 1989, the governments of Belgium and the Netherlands installed a secret committee of linguists whose job it was to realign the inconsistent system of orthography in the Dutch language. In 1994, the ministers rejected the committee's proposals amidst heated public debate on the issue of spelling. This study describes the swing from deliberate secrecy – in order to restrict the discussion to a "merely" academic debate – to an emotional public controversy. The paper explores how the struggle over orthography turned out to be less of a debate on suitable spelling changes than an issue about how legitimate spelling reforms were to be reached and who would be responsible for them. It was, therefore, as much a sociopolitical event as an argumentative struggle. Inspiration of the analysis was provided by Callon and Latour's sociology of translation.
First language loss: Reflex responses, repartee and sound symbolism
Margit Waas
This article is based on a sociolinguistic thesis on language attrition. Non-pathological first languge (L1) loss in a second language (L2) environment was found in a detailed evaluation of 168 interviews conducted with two control groups, and with L1 German speakers who had arrived in Australia as adults between 1970 and 1981.Quantitative analysis revealed regular patterns; qualitative results also showed L1 difficulties with conversational fluency. An examination of qualitative features found new results for L1 attrition research. Emphasis here is given to some of these features, in particular to reflex responses, repartee and sound symbolism in L1. These had been learnt habitually and can be expected to be entrenched by adolescence. However, these features had eroded significantly in L1 speech since migration. The subjects further demonstrated considerable attrition of expressiveness in L1, which manifested itself in a lack of ad hoc responses, idiomatic phrases, proverbs, humour, repartee, quips and onomatopoeia. As a direct result, their L1 often sounded mechanical as well as fragmented because of halting speech and deviations from the L1 sentence structure. After a period of ten to twenty years spent in the L2 environment, the extent of L1 attrition was such that none of the subjects was able to complete the interviews without employing L2.
Linguistic purism in Cuzco, Peru: A historical perspective
Mercedes Niño-Murcia
In Cuzco, Peru, a group of mestizo intellectuals claims that Qhpaj'simi is the Quechua used centuries ago by the Inca nobility and therefore is the purest form of the language. Based on this premise a social hierarchy has been established, the use of this "imperial language" being the marker separating its users from the common people, speakers of the runa simi. Since attitudes if language purism are always bound to cultural idiosyncracies, Cuzco's purist attitudes are contextualized within the history of Indigenism and its role in the construction of regional identity.
Languages policies and independence politics in Quebec
Paul E. O'Donnell
Starting in 1961, Québec's parliament began passing progressively stronger language legislation in favor of the French language. By 1977, it had approved language laws that had no equivalent in the free world. Bill 101 considerably restricts the number of students who can attend English-language schools, while attempting to establish French as the language of Québec's workplace. Bill 178 (1988) prohibited the use of languages other than French on outdoor commercial signs. By late 1995, the pro-independence Parti Québecois had called for (and lost) two referenda on "sovereignty-association" with Canada. This text provides an overview of twenty years of robust language planning in Québec, and examines the effect of the province's institutional instability on the economy, on language planning, and on relations between ethnolinguistic groups. It also elucidates the causes of Québec's taking such strong steps to protect its language and culture. The study concludes, paradoxically that Québec needs its Anglophone population in order to ensure that the French survives.
Interlinguistics and the internet
Mark Fettes
Just as efficient postal and transportation systems provided an essential basis for the development of planned languages in the past hundred years, so the Internet offers new opportunities for their learning, use and study. Most web pages on "constructed", "model" or "imaginary" languages are the work of individual hobbyists, but a few projects appear to have small communities of users. The use of Esperanto in the Internet clearly reflects a much greater degree of socialization, and constitutes a promising domain for linguistic and sociological studies.