Waves of Language Diversity Loss in Japan

An Ecological and Theoretical Account

Bibliographic Data

ID6015028
AuthorsP Heinrich (0000-0001-6717-3684, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume3
Issue1
Pages33-55
Publication date2021-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Asian Linguistic Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2207-0656 • E-ISSN: 2207-0656
PublisherGLOCAL (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.47298/jala.v3-i1-a2
OpenAlexW4324115363
LanguageEN
References cited33

Linguistic diversity has seen two large waves of the loss of linguistic diversity across history. The first wave occurred with the transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural societies, a process that started 11,000 years ago with the Neolithic revolution when agrarian societies colonized territories of hunter-gatherer communities. The second wave started with the establishment of modern nation states and the creation and diffusion of national languages. It is in the latter setting that the vast majority of language endangerment cases are set today. Endangered languages are predominantly replaced by national languages (and not by global English). The institutions of the ‘nation state’ and of ‘national language’ constitute fundamental problems for ethnolinguistic minorities, because their establishment entail the threat of either exclusion or assimilation of these minorities from the nation. In such a situation, minority language and their speakers do usually not fare well. Without altering the modernist language ecologies that exist in modern nation states, language maintenance and revitalization activities are bound to fail in their principal objectives. In this paper, I examine the rise of language nationalism in Japan in the Meiji period (1868-1912), depict how it led to language endangerment, and show how it continues to shape believes about language in contemporary Japan, also within endangered language revitalization activities and policies themselves. Language revitalization requires language ideological clarification, a recalibration of the relations between majority and minorities, and fundamentally new language policies. In the final part, I report on partial changes that can be seen in this direction for the case of the endangered Ainu and Ryukyuan languages in Japan, and analyze to what extent the local language revitalization movements and efforts have so far succeeded in “remaking social reality” (Fishman 1991: 411) together with the majority population of Japan

Agrarian society · Agriculture · Archaeology · Comprehension approach · Diversity (politics · Ideology · Language education · Language policy · Language shift · Linguistics · Meiji period · National language · Nationalism · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Sociology of language · Anthropology · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · Gender Studies in Language · History · Law · Multilingual Education and Policy