Volume 2018, Issue 252 - Special Issue: Surveying speakers and the politics of census, Issue Editors: Alexandre Duchêne and Philippe N. Humbert

In this article, we propose a historical, political, and critical framework that situates language surveys and censuses as an object of sociolinguistic inquiry. First, we provide a brief history of the production of language statistics that aims to understand why authoritative bodies “need” language statistics, and what political agendas they help fulfil. Second, we highlight the epistemological and methodological challenges that emerge from the creation of language statistics. Third, we focus on the socio-political consequences of language statistics in society, including a focus on the actors and institutions that use or contest numbers in various contexts, and how language statistics impact the (un)equal distribution of resources. We argue that censuses and surveys are always embedded in political projects and constitute a complex combination of scientific and socio-political arguments that shape the way language and speakers are conceived of. As such, we emphasize the importance of recognizing censuses and surveys as a site for sociolinguistic inquiry, while anchoring our understanding of this instrument’s inner workings within the particularities of the historical and political conditions in which they emerge.

In this article, I argue that census language questions, policies and ideologies are intertwined and mutually reinforcing. Thus, critical analyses of census language questions must examine the specific policies for which language statistics are produced, as well as the ideologies that undergird those policies and the production of language statistics. After examining the history of language questions and related policies in the U.S., I apply this approach in an analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau’s current language question, arguing that U.S. language policy and official statistics on multilingualism are constrained by monolingual ideologies that center on English as the key point of reference and the marker of full personhood and national belonging. My analysis focuses on four interrelated realms: (1) U.S. language policy and its emphasis on “Limited English Proficiency” in assigning language rights; (2) the broader ideological context; (3) the language question itself; and (4) the impact of language ideologies on survey design and data collection within the U.S. Census Bureau.

The purpose of this article is to analyze the conducting of a state survey on language and to highlight the ideological tensions that are embedded in the search for an appropriate formulation of a question, as well as in the conduct of the survey interviews. Relying on historiographic data, as well as on interactional data, and focusing on the opening question of the survey that deals with the main language(s) of the respondent, defined as the language(s) they know the best, we first explore the origin and the history of this question in the Swiss census. Second, we examine how, by whom, and with what rationales the main language question has been formulated and selected within in the most recent survey. Finally, we analyze how this question is enacted in the interactions between interviewers and respondents. By engaging in a genealogical examination of language questions in Swiss censuses, we provide insight into the ideological formation in which these questions are embedded, revealing conflicting and ambiguous interests, thus implying complications and uncertainties with regard to interpretations of available census data.

Scholars of language policy and politics have increasingly come to appreciate that there is much insight to be gained by scrutinizing data collection practices and the debates around them. What is (or is not) counted and how counting is done has consequence, but in ways that are not always self-evident. Taking the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC) in Spain as a case study, this article examines the historical context in which census and other statistical surveys of language emerged and what the changing forms of quantification can tell us about the evolution of language advocacy discourse and politics more generally. We will look at how concerns with tracking marginalization led minority language advocates to experiment with measures of oral use and linguistic landscapes in the public sphere. The final section examines how economistic and quality management techniques have gained traction in recent efforts to quantify Basque value and vitality today. We conclude with a consideration of the insights to be gained by looking at quantification efforts from the point of view of minority language advocacy.

The Linguistic Survey of India ( LSI ), edited and compiled by George Abraham Grierson, was the first systematic effort by the British colonial government to document the spoken languages and dialects of India. While Grierson advocated an approach to philology that dismissed the affinity of language to race, the LSI mobilizes a complex, intertextual set of racializing discourses that form the ideological ground upon which representations of language were constructed and naturalized. I analyze a sub-set of the LSI’ s volumes in order to demonstrate how Grierson’s linguistic descriptions and categorizations racialize minority languages and their speakers as corrupt, impure, and uncivilized. I highlight how semiotic processes in the text construct speakers as possessing essential “ethnic” characteristics that are seen as indexical of naturalized linguistic differences. I argue that metapragmatic statements within descriptions of languages and dialects are made possible by ethnological discourses that ultimately reinforce an indexical relationship between language and race. This analysis of the survey sheds light on the centrality of language in colonial constructions of social difference in India, as well as the continued importance of language as a tool for legitimating claims for political recognition in postcolonial India.

The article investigates the creation of language statistics in the Sudan, from the beginning of the twentieth century up to the division of the country into two states. Like many other African countries, Sudan is characterized by a high degree of ethnic and linguistic diversity that has participated in the fueling of murderous civil wars since independence. The article recontextualizes the construction of the ethno-linguistic categories and statistics within their broader political and administrative contexts. It analyzes the objectives and output of each type of statistics and questions their influence on the foreign and native representations of Sudanese society.

The extinction of Tai Ahom, a language from the Tai-Kadai family that was once spoken in Assam, India, can be contributed to a number of socio-historical, linguistic and cultural factors including the development and strong influence of Assamese, a language from the Indo-Aryan family spoken in that region. In an effort to examine the dynamics that contributed to the loss of Tai Ahom, the current article focuses on a descriptive overview of issues including language shift, variation, and extinction in the case of Tai Ahom. It will also highlight the factors which contributed to its shift and gradual extinction and discuss current efforts to revive the language.