Dmitri van den Bersselaar (pp. 123–147)
The Language of Igbo Ethnic Nationalism
Béatrice Cabau-Lampa (pp. 149–165)
L’expérience suédoise en matière d’enseignement des langues-cultures
d’origine
Mari C. Jones (pp. 167–196)
Swimming Against the Tide: Language Planning on Jersey
Interlinguistics / Interlingüística / Interlinguistik / Interlingvistiko
Michel Duc Goninaz (pp. 197–200)
L’espérantologie en revue (2)
Reviews / Críticas / Rezensionen / Recenzoj
Elizabeth Coelho:
Teaching and Learning in Multicultural Schools: An Integrated Approach (Carlo Minnaja)
Heiner Eichner, Peter Ernst, Sergios Katsikas (Hg.):
Festschrift für Otto Back zum 70. Geburtstag (Klaus Schubert)
Thomas Clayton:
Education and the Politics of Language (Björn H. Jernudd)
Achille Serrao, Luigi Bonaffini and Justin Vitiello (eds.):
Via Terra. An Anthology of Contemporary Italian Dialect Poetry (Frank Nuessel)
The Language of Igbo Ethnic Nationalism
Dmitri van den Bersselaar
Starting from Benedict Anderson’s notion that nationalism evolves around a vernacular readership, this article explores the relation between a nation or ethnic group and ‘its’ language. It analyses the link between ideas about Igbo language and the rise of Igbo ethnic identity in twentieth-century Nigeria. It focuses, first, on how language was introduced as an important marker for ethnic identity, and, second, on how the notion of the existence of an ‘Igbo language’ was successfully employed in debates by Igbo ethnic nationalists and others. Early efforts to standardize the Igbo language were initiated by missionaries and the colonial government, who had also decided upon the boundaries of the Igbo language and the Igbo ethnic group. Most Igbo people preferred literacy in English and were not interested in these efforts. This situation changed after 1940, when the growing influence of the Nigerian anti-colonial movement began to make an impact on the perception of the Igbo language. This does not mean that Igbo became more widely used as a written language. Nearly all articles and pamphlets on the Igbo language and its role continued to be written in English. Also, all attempts to standardize Igbo failed. Thus, the notion of the existence of one shared Igbo language was important and not the existence of a vernacular readership in that language.
L’expérience suédoise en matière d’enseignement des langues-cultures
d’origine
Béatrice Cabau-Lampa
L’enseignement des langues-cultures d’origine dans le cadre scolaire — comme celui du suédois langue seconde — constitue l’un des principaux volets de la politique sociale suédoise qui a attiré l’attention des observateurs étrangers il y a plusieurs années. On est en droit de se demander comment et pourquoi les autorités suédoises ont fait preuve d’une telle générosité en matière de moyens d’éducation offerts aux enfants de migrants. Par ailleurs, il convient de s’intéresser à ce qui reste du fameux « modèle suédois » dans ce domaine. C’est ainsi que dans un premier temps, cet article étudiera brièvement les données constitutives du milieu éducatif suédois puis, les différentes questions liées à la mise en place de l’enseignement des langues- cultures d’origine (réglementation, organisation, participation, ressources, formation des enseignants...). Enfin, il exposera les nouvelles perspectives dans lesquelles a été envisagé cet enseignement selon le contexte suédois des années 1990, à savoir la réorganisation des cadres d’enseignement/apprentissage et l’apparition d’établissements libres bilingues.
Swimming Against the Tide: Language Planning on Jersey
Mari C. Jones
A variety of Romance has been spoken on Jersey for some two thousand years. However Jèrriais, the Norman dialect spoken on the Island today, is now obsolescent. Its decline in fortune has recently prompted a number of corpus and status planning initiatives which, largely devoid of State support, lie in the hands of a small, non-linguistically trained, group of enthusiasts. This paper examines the different agencies of language planning on Jersey and the progress they have made hitherto, comparing the corpus and status planning undertaken in this context with that which occurs in countries where more support is forthcoming from the State, and situating the position of Jèrriais within the contemporary language planning literature. It also suggests some possible avenues for the future and discusses the factors which are likely to determine the success or otherwise of the outcome. The paper highlights the fact that, by themselves, high-prestige domains such as the school do not necessarily hold the key to successful language maintenance.