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Language Ideologies and Minority Language Education: Lessons from Brittany for Kashubia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 November 2017

Nicole Dołowy-Rybińska  and
Michael Hornsby
Nicole Dołowy-Rybińska
Affiliation:
Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland. Email: [email protected]
Michael Hornsby
Affiliation:
Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, al. Niepodległości 4, 61-874 Poznań, Poland. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

In many situations of minority language education, the focus has been on gains in the absolute numbers of speakers, with the result that less attention has been paid to the processes and linguistic outcomes associated with students in these educational programmes. In this article, we initiate a discussion on the revitalization situations in Brittany and Kashubia from a comparative perspective. In particular, we look at the different models of education in each of these regions and examine ethnographic data that highlight the attempts of students to attain legitimate ‘speakerhood’ of the minority languages in question. In particular, we take into the consideration the difficulties associated with these situations of attempted additive multilingualism when the general trend, among the majority populations, is toward standardized monolingualism. By way of a conclusion, we attempt to evaluate the different educational systems in both regions in terms of the production of future generations of ‘successful’ Kashubian and Breton speakers by examining the various language ideologies that are apparent in both situations of language revitalization.

Type
Focus: Language Endangerment and Revitalization
Information
European Review , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , February 2018 , pp. 192 - 206
Copyright
© Academia Europæa 2017 

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References

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