|
 |
 |
|
| Sociolingüística internacional |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Language policies and planning in the context of internationalisation, by Mariano Asensio | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
CONTINUA |
|
Falling back on the methodological tools
of peripheral sociolinguistics is the theory of what we could term the French-speaking
school versus the hypotheses from the other side of the Atlantic – with the exception
of Quebec, of course. One of the precursors of these assumptions is Professor Robert
CHAUDENSON, who began his work on Creoles on Reunion Island (1974; 1979).
CHAUDENSON’s theory makes a radical break with Hall’s pidgin-Creole cycle
theses. The French author sees the process of creolisation as the result of the
interaction of three types of phenomenon: mechanisms of linguistic appropriation,
self-regulating processes in linguistic communication and genetic evolution, whether
through autonomy of the lexifying language or by filiation of a proto-Creole. He defines
the process as: "Les créoles sont des langues, nées de la colonisation européenne des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, dans des sociétés, pour la plupart insulaires, où l’arrivée massive d’esclaves, rendue indispensable par le développement agro-industriel, a modifié le mode de transmission de la langue européenne. La créolisation résulte de l’appropriation par les nouveaux esclaves de variétés périphériques de l’idiome du colonisateur; cette appropriation approximative, en quelque sorte portée au "carré", s’est accompagnée d’une perte de contact avec le modèle central et a entraîné une autonomisation de ces variétés linguistiques périphériques" (CHAUDENSON:1995.93). Sociolinguistic analysis, hence, gives the expression "languages in contact" a deeper meaning, since it is based on the premise that mutual influences on languages necessarily pass through the speakers who use them, and the latter live and die in continual social "contact". CHAUDENSON’s extensive research on the genesis and development of Creole languages and languages in contact in the former colonies, curiously ignored by sociolinguists writing in non-autonomous Spanish, if we may use the term, by such figures as LÓPEZ MORALES (1993) and Moreno Fernández (1998) whose substantial bibliographies make no mention whatsoever of the author, leads the French professor to analyse the linguistic policies of these societies and to introduce methodological concepts such as the status and corpus of a language into the creation of his "grille" of measurement and comparison of the situation of the French language in French-speaking countries (Chaudenson; VV.AA.: 1991). The distinction between status and corpus lies in the fact that, on the one hand, status refers to the official character of a language, decided constitutionally for all its institutional uses: government, justice, teaching, business and mass media; corpus, on the other hand, concerns all that refers to use, modes of appropriating a language and linguistic production in daily life (See Dumont: 117). Thus, we have:
CALVET (1996: 34-43) suggests another use for this tool: considering the languages in relation to a country and not countries in relation to a language. In this way, each language would be considered according to three parameters: - level of usage: the percentage of speakers of this language in the country under study (the corpus). - the level of acknowledgement: the language’s officialness or lack of (the status). - the level of functionality: the possibilities that a language has of carrying out the functions it has been designated (Fasold’s attributes:function ratio). If we want a language to carry out a certain function, it must be equipped adequately. For example, if we want to introduce a language into teaching, to make a language the language used for teaching, it will first require a transcription, alphabetical or otherwise, regulation, the creation of a grammatical terminology, etc. What then would the price:quality, cost:benefit ratio be? The answer to this question allows us to understand:
|
