Continuum Discourses of Endangerment: Ideology and Interest in the Defence of Languages

About the Author Alexandre Duchêne is Professor in Sociology of Language and Multilingualism at the University of Teacher Education, Fribourg, Switzerland.Monica Heller is Professor in the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto, Canada. Product Description Current academic discussions and public debates about language frequently focus on the importance of defending languages against various kinds of dangers. Many of these current debates attach great importance to linguistic diversity. The debates focus on defending institutionalized languages against multilingualism, or conversely defending minority languages against the incursion of larger ones, especially the spread of English. In both cases, languages are constructed as autonomous wholes, held to need defending against attack. This book challenges such a view of language, to argue that the discussions in question are not in fact about language itself. The internationally renowned contributors claim that we are witnessing ideological struggles which are taking place on the terrain of language. Discourses of Endangerment addresses such questions as: * What does language represent in discussions of multilingualism? * Why is it constituted as an organic whole?* In whose interest does it lie to construct language in this way?* Who has an interest in taking various positions for or against official languages?* In what way is the linguistic order tied to the social order? The book addresses these issues through a set of case studies which locate the terms of the discussion in broad discourses of language, identity and power. Covering a wide-range of languages including Catalan, Swedish, Corsican, Ukrainian and French, from different sociolinguistic perspectives, this book is essential reading for students and academics interested in language endangerment and sociolinguistics. Review ."..the volume's co-editors argue persuasively...an especially compelling set of questions...authors [are] very skilled in reading ideologies from their data...As a critique of discourses of endangerment, the volume makes significant strides not merely in questioning the rhetorical strategies used to discuss language extinction but also in disclosing conflicts of interest underlying these approaches...this volume takes a major step in offering a language ideological interpretation of how political-economic interests have shaped two very different kinds of threats - one rather real, the other quite imagined...it is a critical complement to such works for scholars interested in language ideological construction of "endangerment."" Language in Society, 2009"A most stimulating work ... whose contributions in terms of knowledge, theoretical ideas and analyses are indispensible to begin to understand the evolution of the present-day situation of our world's languages." Education et Societes plurilingues, 25 --Sanford Lakoff"Following in the wake of a number of recent books about language endangerment or language death, this work, with its discourse-analytic perspective, turns a critical eye on the received wisdom in linguistics concerning the endangerment of human linguistic diversity. Some of the authors state that their intention, however, is not to question the reality of the threats to language diversity but merely to analyze the ways language endangerment ideologies are discursively constructed. The 13 chapters, each with its own endnotes and bibliography, stand alone well and can be read in any order, but the book coheres nicely around its central perspective, first developed by Heller and Duchene's opening chapter...Readers concerned about current predictions of the loss of much human linguistic diversity are unlikely to have their minds changed by this work, but it does a fine job of reasking important questions and of shedding light on how these linguistics issues have been pres