Linguicide

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The expression Linguizid (from Latin lingua (language) and -cidium (-mord)), German language murder or speech murder , describes the planned or consciously accepted destruction of a language . A linguicide is usually achieved through constitutional and institutional measures that prohibit the use of a language. In addition to the open attempt to suppress or “kill” a language, the mere letting a language die or the lack of support for a language is also seen as a covert linguicide.

Notes on the expression linguicide

The word creation linguicide (engl. Linguicide ) is analogous to genocide (engl. Genocide ) is formed, the targeted destruction of a people. In contrast to genocide, linguicide is not a term recognized under international law .

Linguicide is used primarily in literature dealing with minority and human rights . In contrast to the more comprehensive term linguistic death , which also includes the disappearance of a language due to non-political causes such as natural disasters or urbanization , linguicide is about targeted, mostly political measures to ban a language from the public. Most of the time, such measures are aimed at suppressing minorities , forcing the assimilation of minorities and establishing uniformity in a nation-state .

Some linguists believe that the term linguicide, in the sense of speech murder, is not always appropriate to describe complex situations in which the use of a language is abandoned. That is why in some literature you will find the expression speech death . Other literature speaks more of the violation of linguistic human rights or the violation of minority rights.

In rare cases, (French) linguicide is also used in the sense of "language spoiler", e.g. B. used in advertising.

Types of linguicide

In the literature, various activities are named as linguicide:

  • Extermination of speakers of a language or a dialect (genocide):
  • Repressive measures to prevent the development of a language or a dialect
  • Measures that forcibly transform a bilingual society into a monolingual society
  • Denial of the right to use a certain language in public schools and in the mass media
  • Refusal of moral and material support for cultural tasks and language maintenance

Examples of linguicide are:

  • Extermination of the speakers: The Shoah contributed to the annihilation of Yiddish in Europe, other examples are the so-called Indian wars , which had genocidal traits, or the extermination of the Tasmanians .
  • Constitutional prohibition of the use of languages ​​in public life: Tove Skutnabb-Kangas and Sertaç Bucak assess the constitution of Turkey as being designed in such a way that the Kurdish language is killed: Kurdish person names and place names may not be used in official documents, lessons also for Kurdish ones Children only takes place in Turkish, not in their mother tongue, Kurdish is not allowed to be spoken in public.
  • Prohibition of the use of languages ​​in literature and teaching: In the Russian Empire, the use of non-Russian languages ​​such as Ukrainian was banned; in the 1960s the use of Polish was banned in Russian schools. In parts of Poland, the use of the German language was also banned after the Second World War.
  • Separation of children from their parents or separation of language communities: parts of the language policy in the United States were evaluated as a violation of linguistic human rights and cultural genocide, so severed slaveholders z. B. African slaves from their tribes and children from their parents. English settlers later applied similar measures to Native American school children .
  • Prohibition of mother tongue teaching and compulsory dissolution of mother tongue schools, e.g. B. the dissolution of German schools in Australia during the First World War
  • Promotion of only one language as a national language: In his study of Breton, Albert Bock mentions the measures taken by the French government from 1790 to suppress all minority languages ​​in France.
  • Institutionalized separation of children from their parents in order to prevent the transmission of their mother tongue and thus the transmission of the culture, e.g. children of Australian natives , the so-called stolen generation , children of Canadian natives ( First Nations , Inuit and Métis ) in the residential schools and Yenish children as victims of the so-called Kinder der Landstrasse relief organization

Linguicide and linguistic human rights

Linguistic minorities are officially protected by international law and the protection of minorities by the UN and other international bodies. In Europe in particular, numerous official and unofficial efforts are known today to revive languages ​​believed to be extinct or threatened. Gaelic in Ireland and Romansh are examples where this policy is beginning to show signs of success. Albert Bock, however, sees the previous language policy in France as insufficient to revive or promote the minority languages that have been suppressed since the French Revolution ( Breton , Basque , Alsatian , Lorraine , West Flemish , Corsican , Occitan ).

See also

literature

  • Albert Bock: Linguicide on Breton . In: Brennos Studia Celtica Austriaca , No. 1/1996.
  • David Crystal: Language Death . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2000, ISBN 0-521-65321-5 .
  • Jaroslav B. Rudnyckyj: Linguizid . A contribution to sociolinguistics . In: La Monda lingvo-problemo 1 (1), Mouton, Den Haag 1969, pp. 27-30.
  • Jaroslav B. Rudnyckyj: Linguicide , 3rd edition. Ukranian Technological University, Winnipeg / Munich 1976.
  • Tove Skutnabb-Kangas: Language, Literacy and Minorities . The Minority Rights Group, London 1990.
  • Tove Skutnabb-Kangas: Linguistic genocide in education? or worldwide diversity and human rights? Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, New Jersey & London 2000, ISBN 0-8058-3468-0 .
  • Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, Robert Phillipson : Linguicide . In: RE Asher, JMY Simpson (Eds.): The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics . Volume 4. Pergamon Press, Oxford 1994, ISBN 0-08-035943-4 , pp. 2211-2212.
  • Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, Robert Phillipson (Ed.): Linguistic Human Rights. Overcoming Linguistic Discrimination. Contributions to the Sociology of Language 67. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1995, ISBN 3-11-014370-4 .

Web links

Wiktionary: Linguizid  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Jaroslav B. Rudnyckyj: Linguicide , 3rd edition. Ukranian Technological University, Winnipeg / Munich 1976, p. 14.
  2. ^ A b Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, Robert Phillipson: Linguicide . In: RE Asher, JMY Simpson (Eds.): The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics . Volume 4. Pergamon Press, Oxford 1994, ISBN 0-08-035943-4 , p. 2211.
  3. ↑ Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, Robert Phillipson (Ed.): Linguistic Human Rights. Overcoming Linguistic Discrimination. Contributions to the Sociology of Language 67. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1995, ISBN 3-11-014370-4 .
  4. ^ David Crystal: Language Death . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2000, ISBN 0-521-65321-5 , p. 86.
  5. ↑ Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, Robert Phillipson (Ed.): Linguistic Human Rights. Overcoming Linguistic Discrimination. Contributions to the Sociology of Language 67. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1995, ISBN 3-11-014370-4 .
  6. ↑ Jacques Olivier Grandjouan: Les linguicides , Didier, Paris 1987th
  7. ↑ Jaroslav B. Rudnyckyj: Linguicide , 3rd edition. Ukranian Technological University, Winnipeg / Munich 1976, p. 24.
  8. ↑ Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, Sertaç Bucak: Killing a mother tongue - how Kurds are deprived of linguistic human rights . In: Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, Robert Phillipson (Ed.): Linguistic Human Rights. Overcoming Linguistic Discrimination. Contributions to the Sociology of Language 67. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1995, ISBN 3-11-014370-4 , pp. 347-348.
  9. ↑ Jaroslav B. Rudnyckyj: Linguicide , 3rd edition. Ukranian Technological University, Winnipeg / Munich 1976, pp. 14-15.
  10. ^ Franz-Josef Sehr : Professor from Poland in Beselich annually for decades . In: Yearbook for the Limburg-Weilburg district 2020 . The district committee of the district of Limburg-Weilburg, Limburg 2019, ISBN 3-927006-57-2 , p. 223-228 .
  11. ^ Eduardo Hernández-Chávez: Language policy in the United States: A history of cultural genocide . In: Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, Robert Phillipson (Ed.): Linguistic Human Rights. Overcoming Linguistic Discrimination. Contributions to the Sociology of Language 67. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1995, ISBN 3-11-014370-4 , p. 157.
  12. ↑ JJ Smolicz: Australia's language policies and minority rights: a core value perspective . In: Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, Robert Phillipson (Ed.): Linguistic Human Rights. Overcoming Linguistic Discrimination. Contributions to the Sociology of Language 67. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1995, ISBN 3-11-014370-4 , p. 242.
  13. ↑ Albert Bock: Linguizid at Breton . In: Brennos Studia Celtica Austriaca , No. 1/1996, p. 18.
  14. ↑ Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, Robert Phillipson: Linguistic human rights, past and present . In: Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, Robert Phillipson (Ed.): Linguistic Human Rights. Overcoming Linguistic Discrimination. Contributions to the Sociology of Language 67. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1995, ISBN 3-11-014370-4 , pp. 71-110.
  15. ↑ Albert Bock: Linguizid at Breton . In: Brennos Studia Celtica Austriaca , No. 1/1996, p. 23.