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attitude is most prominent in education, where the dominant language is often used exclusively from the primary level onward. In some cases, even though many minority children have not had the opportunity to learn the dominant language before they enter the education system, they are punished when they use their indigenous language. 22 in Africa, for example, all secondary education is conducted in a european language such as English, French, or Portuguese, and none of the languages that are native to the continent are used at all; only a small percentage of these languages are even used in primary education. 23 Historically, the birth of state policies against the use indigenous languages paralleled the rise of nationalism and the formation of the concept of the nation state. in general, the empires that dominated Europe before the 19 in such countries, other public services, like the justice system and employment programs, are also conducted in the dominant language or the language of the relevant European colonizer, and speakers of small, indigenous languages do not have the ability to navigate the maze of government bureaucracy to gain access to these opportunities. th century tolerated minority languages; the Ottoman empire was especially accepting of smaller languages and allowed local administration and education to operate in those languages. 24 The mid-19th century, Many African countries have European languages as the official or one however, saw the of the official languages. birth of the nation state, the idea that a government derived legitimacy by ruling over a unitary ethnic or cultural group. in order to claim legitimacy under this definition, many governments began to impose the dominant population’s language on the minority population. the fact that there were minority linguistic As people move from rural areas to cities, more languages will become groups in the first endangered and eventually extinct. place suggests that the concept of a nation state has always been more theoretical than pragmatic, but in order to maintain the myth of the nation state, governments had to 14 Melbourne Host Directorate PTY LTD | Office of Media and Design
drive minority languages into the private sphere and insist on the use of the majority language in administration, education, and commerce. this logic has led to the drastic reduction of living languages in Europe, where most countries currently have one dominant language that every resident is expected to know. 25 In France, for example, there were a number of independent communities that had their own language before the French Revolution, including the Bretons, Alsatians, and the Occitanians. in order to unify France under their control, the revolutionaries instituted French, which was the language of highest prestige at the time, as the official language of the state. Since 1800, the numbers of speakers of Breton, Alsatian, and Occitan have dropped precipitously, such that Breton and Occitan are considered to be severely endangered languages today. 26 in defense of the idea of a unifying language for a successful state, many point to Canada, india, and Belgium as countries where linguistic and ethnic conflicts have arisen after multiple language communities were allowed to exist. 27 interestingly, it is not only the attitude of states against minority languages that leads to language endangerment, but also the self-perception of many minority language speakers that their language is inferior in some way. A good example of this negative self-perception can be found among the speakers of Haida and Tlingit in Southeast Alaska in the United States. Many Haidi and Tlingit speakers believe that God does not like their languages, an idea that was perpetuated by church officials during the conversion of the native population of the region. While churches generally do not encourage this belief today, Christian missionaries have spread the idea that God does not like many indigenous languages throughout the world, and this view still remains in many areas. 28 Speakers of Haida and Tlingit also express shame and embarrassment toward their own languages. Older speakers often recall memories of being punished in school for using their indigenous language and thus do not encourage the younger generations to learn and utilize the language. Many believe that they are backwards or undeveloped for speaking an indigenous language. 29 This negative perception of their own language is often encouraged by the fact that many of these languages lack an established written literature, which makes them seem inferior to the dominant language. 30 Many parents also think that the differences between their indigenous languages and English prohibit a child from learning both languages successfully, so they do not pass Haida or Tlingit to their children and do not support programs to protect these endangered languages. 31 This negative self-perception that many endangered language speakers have toward their mother tongue emerges ultimately from the attitudes of the state and dominant language speakers. 32 Dressler provides a model for linguistic endangerment that effectively exemplifies the connection between state and majority language attitudes and such negative self-perception. According to his model, minority language speakers undergo social subordination by dominant language speakers through restricted access to education, public services, and employment. This subordination leads minority language speakers to internalize the stigmatization of their language and to develop a negative perception of their mother tongue. Because of this negative self-perception, speakers of minority languages often restrict the use of their language to a small set of domains, usually in the private sphere. This restriction leads to endangerment as speakers begin to abandon the language. Finally, the fact that their language is endangered reinforces the community’s negative self-perception, making the model cyclic. 33 in addition to the myth of the nation state, certain other commonly held beliefs contribute to state policies against minority languages and to the 15 Melbourne Host Directorate PTY LTD | Office of Media and Design
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