Will the real Breton please stand up? Language revitalization and the problem of authentic language
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Madeleine Adkins
Abstract
In the context of language endangerment and revitalization, many researchers look to the language of traditional speakers as the standard for “authentic” language. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this article examines the challenges of researching a traditional variety of an endangered language and of evaluating speaker fluency among native speakers of a language that has manyvarieties and no traditional standard. As shown in this study, speakers display a tendency to assess their own Breton as inferior, uneducated, and imperfect; paradoxically, these same speakers also evaluate literary or academic varieties and the neo-Breton of the school-learned speakers of the language as suspect. The speakers' expressed self-evaluations of fluency demonstrate the problematic nature of identifying an authentic, fluent speaker in a society where, for generations, a language has been alternately ignored and denigrated by the government and the public education system. In exploring these issues, this article sheds light upon the sociolinguistic impact of language contact in endangered language contexts, and the resultant real-world challenges for endangered language communities looking to identify and promote confident speakers, and for researchers relying upon self- and other-reported evaluations of fluent speakerhood.
©[2013] by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Introduction
- Langue bretonne : un siècle de mutations
- À propos des relations entre langue et identité en Bretagne
- La langue bretonne dans la société régionale contemporaine
- Will the real Breton please stand up? Language revitalization and the problem of authentic language
- Contested varieties and competing authenticities: neologisms in revitalized Breton
- The social practice of Breton: an epistemological challenge
- Les trois ruptures sociolinguistiques du breton
- Institutional Breton language policy after language shift
- Signe et sens en balance: le breton affiché dans la ville de Brest
- Teaching languages for a multilingual Europe – minority schools as examples of best practice? The Breton experience of Diwan
- Signs of absence: language and memory in the linguistic landscape of Brittany
- Book review
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Introduction
- Langue bretonne : un siècle de mutations
- À propos des relations entre langue et identité en Bretagne
- La langue bretonne dans la société régionale contemporaine
- Will the real Breton please stand up? Language revitalization and the problem of authentic language
- Contested varieties and competing authenticities: neologisms in revitalized Breton
- The social practice of Breton: an epistemological challenge
- Les trois ruptures sociolinguistiques du breton
- Institutional Breton language policy after language shift
- Signe et sens en balance: le breton affiché dans la ville de Brest
- Teaching languages for a multilingual Europe – minority schools as examples of best practice? The Breton experience of Diwan
- Signs of absence: language and memory in the linguistic landscape of Brittany
- Book review
