LHR paradigm pt. 1

Question 1

What are the 10 socio-linguistic axioms?

Answer 1

** Language is speech; or sign; writing is secondary

** Children are biologically designed to become multilingual

** Acquiring literacy is best done in mother tongue

** All natural languages are equivalent in their potential value – moral, aesthetic and social – in their expressive capacity

** Language is a primary means for engaging the world, developing and expressing (both individual and group identity)

** Educational institutional use arbitrary language standards as gate-keeping devices to reproduce the status quo

** Standard language and writing based norms historically have privileged elite minorities, and continue to do so, necessarily

** Bias towards/against a language or dialect stands in for bias towards/against its speakers

** Ethnicity and language have complex and dynamic relations

*** Language planning (=language interference) and legislation, even by expert practitioners, frequently fails or backfires

Question 2

What are the FOUR V’s?

Answer 2

1. Variety: any linguistic system with cohesive distribution in social space
2. Variation: when two or more different forms can occur in precisely the same environment, with the same meaning.
   …. I.e. we mean variation in form, holding the meaning (or function) constant. It is the mechanism for making………..
3. Variability: differences in language use that are defined over social groups (as variation was differences in language use defined over linguistic form).
   …. It is the dimension in which the social meanings of collective language choice become visible, as those choices are associated with the orientation of the speakers towards social groups.
4. Vernacular: the native variety of a particular speech community, learned orally in early childhood

Question 3

Define negative rights

Answer 3

Negative rights: equal protection of laws, national self-determination, freedom of speech/opinion & form tyranny

Universal declaration of human rights, UN charter (1940s)

Question 4

Define postitive rights

Answer 4

protection of minorities, freedom from discrimination, education and economics rights, maintenance of identity, full civic participation

Question 5

Define legal positivism

Answer 5

HRs that are laws recognized in international treaties which are legal instruments

Question 6

UN Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities (1967) found 4 basic patterns of language rights

Answer 6

1. All languages spoken by the main linguistic groups are given official status: Switzerland, Belgium, Singapore (diglossia)
2. Some minority languages designated official languages: e.g. Canada, Finland, New Zealand, Israel
3. Some minority languages are granted official status but only at regional level
4. Minority languages are refused official status, but their status is protected in part via constitution, treaties, national legislation: USA, Poland etc

Question 7

Define legal instruments

Answer 7

• International covenant on civil and political rights
• International covenant on economic, social, and cultural rights
• UN declaration on the rights on persons belonging to national, ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities
• European convention of rights of national minorities