LINGUIST List 12.1929

Mon Jul 30 2001

Review: Mar-Molinero, Politics of Language

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  • Angela Bartens, Mar-Molinero, Politics of Lg in the Spanish-Speaking World

    Message 1: Mar-Molinero, Politics of Lg in the Spanish-Speaking World

     Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 14:11:45 +0800
    From: Angela Bartens <Angela.Bartenshelsinki.fi>
    Subject: Mar-Molinero, Politics of Lg in the Spanish-Speaking World


    Mar-Molinero, Clare (2000) The Politics of Language in the Spanish- Speaking World: From Colonisation to Globalisation. Routledge, xiii+242pp. Paperback ISBN 0-415-15655-6, US$30.99; Hardcover ISBN 0-415-15654-8, US$100,00.

    Reviewed by Angela Bartens, University of Helsinki.

    Synopsis

    Over the past few years, the complex interrelationships between language and politics, language policy as much as the political in language, have received increasing attention as a key to understanding the patterning of sociocultural and political conflict and peaceful coexistence of human nations. Clare Mar-Molinero aims at a comprehensive presentation of the politics of language in the Spanish- speaking world, a vast area defined as speaking the world's third most used language, usually as an L1.

    The book is divided into four parts which move from a generic discussion of language and identity to the specific outcomes of chosen examples of language policy and educational practices (cf. p. x). The first chapter of each part consists of an introduction to the theoretical framework for the concrete examples from the Spanish- speaking world discussed in the subsequent chapters. Although approximately 400 millions of Spanish speakers are spread all around the world, Mar-Molinero chooses to limit the discussion to Spain and Latin America "where Spanish is buoyant and secure" (p. 18).

    Part I, "Spanish as national language. Conflict and hegemony" starts with a discussion of the relationship between "Language and nationalism" (ch. 1). Two basic types of nationalism are identified, political nationalism as defended by Rousseau and the French Revolution, and cultural nationalism which starts with Herder and has been continued by von Humboldt, Fichte, and in the 20th century also by Fishman. In cultural nationalism, language is seen as one if not the most important defining characteristic of a nation. Political nationalism, on the other hand, takes a pragmatic view of language as a tool of deliberate nation- and/or state-building. While a nation may be defined by a common language, race, religion, cultural traditions, history, body of laws and/or territory, a state is above all a political construct, the borders of which have often been drawn artificially. European nationalism as it emerged during the 19th century has aimed at the construction of nation-states where a state consists of a single nation. Most present-day states are, however, home to several nations, and the habitat of many nations is divided by political borders.

    Ch. 2, "The 'Castilianisation' process: the emergence of Spanish as dominant language", traces the development of Castilian, originally just another Iberoromance language or dialect, from its medieval origins to its present-day hegemonic position. The first step towards the victory of Castilian was taken when the Visigoths established their capital in Toledo. The outstanding role played by Castile in the Reconquista and later in the colonization of the New World - Catalans and Galicians were banned from trading with the American colonies and their languages were consequently not transplanted to the New World -- as well as the union of the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon in 1469 all contributed to the rise of Castilian. But it wasn't until the18th century that linguistic uniformity was required and the other languages and dialects spoken on the Iberian Peninsula were (almost) irretrievably marginalized. Charles' III 1768 declaration that only Castilian could be used in the administration and in education had severe consequences both on the Iberian Peninsula and in the American colonies. The colonizing enterprise was both political-economic and religious, and especially the Church relied on regional linguae francae such as Nahuatl, Quechua, and Guaran�. Although opinions concerning the most suitable language for evangelization differed, the use of Amerindian languages came to an unexpectedly abrupt end with the 1768 declaration. In preparation of this declaration, the Jesuits, the most arduous defenders of the use of native languages, had been expulsed from the American colonies already a year earlier.

    Mar-Molinero then discusses the alternative theories about the origins of Spanish: either it developed directly from Castilian or it is an amalgam of various Peninsular dialects, prominent in which was Castilian (p. 36). The importance of Andalusian Spanish to the emergence of Latin American Spanish has been exaggerated: most of the early conquistadores came from Castile and the Extremadura where admittedly a Reconquista dialect very similar to Andalusian was and is spoken. The role of the Canary Islands in the colonization of the Americas should not be forgotten, either. Whatever its roots and whatever it was called in the different colonies -- Mar-Molinero shows how the glossonym "Castilian" is preferred e.g. in present-day Guatemalan usage as more neutral than "Spanish", still associated with the colonial period, while e.g. U.S. Latinos reject "Castilian" because they feel their roots are Spanish and not just Castilian (p. 37) -- the Spanish language was just a tool in the struggle for independence and subsequent national cohesion in Latin America (Simon Bol�var, the famous independence fighter, was much influenced by the French Revolution and the writings of Rousseau). It wasn't until later that some Latin American independent states more than others started unearthing the Herderian links between language, culture, and identity.

    Ch. 3, "Counter-nationalism and the other languages of the Spanish- speaking world" examines the fate of communities speaking a language other than Spanish both in Spain and in Latin America. Insightful histories of the Catalan, Basque and Galician (counter-)nationalist movements highlight their differences and common features: In Catalonia and in Galicia, an initially culturally oriented movement became political in the course of time while Basque nationalism at first represented the political agenda of an individual (Sabino Arana, 1865- 1903). Catalans had a medieval cultural legacy to look back to and so did Galicians, albeit to a lesser degree. For both Catalan and Galician nationalism, language constitutes a defining criterion. However, Spanish remains the prestige language in Galicia. Basque was a highly fragmented oral language spoken by a minority and well into the 20th century, race constituted the most important defining characteristic of Basqueness. On the other hand, both Catalonia and the Basque Country reaped the fruits of early industrialization while Galicia was agrarian and poor which lead inter alia to a lower level of education in the population. In all three cases, nationalism was promoted at least at some point by the elites and the middle classes. By consequence, these nationalist movements exist until the present day. While Spanish state- building has been successful, this cannot be said to be the case of Spanish nation-building.

    In Latin America, it is clear from the beginning that we are dealing with states or nation-states at best but certainly not homogeneous nations. The indigenous nations are marginalized and poor and often straddle borders. This explains why even such major linguae francae as Nahuatl or Quechua are endangered today and Spanish continues to enjoy "a position of immense superiority" (p. 63). Paraguay, with its nominal coofficiality and wide-spread bilingualism in Spanish and Guaran�, constitutes a counter example to the marginalization of indigenous languages in the Americas. But it has to be born in mind that this particular situation is due to three factors: Guaran� was the lingua franca of the region already before the Spanish arrived; the role played by the Jesuits in Paraguay; and it's geographical and post- independence political isolation. By consequence, Paraguay is the exception which confirms the rule.

    Part II of this book deals with "Legislation and the realities of linguistic diversity". In ch. 4, "Language rights, language policies and Language Planning", Mar-Molinero sums up the relevant background information: the 1996 Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights, the difficulty of catering to both individual and collective linguistic rights, etc. Mar-Molinero feels that it is necessary to distinguish between language policy as decision-making from language planning as implementation (p. 74). However, it seems to me that this makes drawing a distinct line between language policy and status planning quite difficult. Besides the traditional division into status and corpus planning, Mar-Molinero also talks about acquisition and normalization planning. This last concept developed by Catalan sociolinguists overlaps with both status and acquisition planning and aims at empowering the speakers of the minority language by increasing the domains and functions of language use, the geographic area where it is spoken, and language competence in the speakers.

    In ch. 5, Mar-Molinero examines "The state and language policies in the contemporary Spanish-speaking world". The point of departure in the three peninsular minority communities is very different: After language revitalization efforts in all of them, today 75% of the population of Catalonia, 80% of the population of Galicia and 25% of the population of the Basque Country speak the corresponding language. In an almost- reversal of language policy since the end of the dictatorial Franco regime in 1975, the Spanish state recognizes both multilingualism and the autonomy of its regions. On the state level, however, monolingualism is still implicitly encouraged. This hegemony is most vigorously challenged by the Catalans, above all through the economical power of Catalonia.

    While there was for example some interest towards the scientific study of the indigenous languages and cultures in the Mexico of the second half of the 19th century, the newly independent Latin American states aimed at molding monolingual and monocultural nation-states. According to Hamel (1997), a period of multiculturalism has followed in many Latin American states in the 20th century: the existence of indigenous groups has been acknowledged, usually alongside with measures to assimilate these populations. Finally, in the late 20th century a quest for pluriculturalism has started to emerge where diversity is seen as an enrichment for the entire nation. However, both in Spain and in Latin America individual linguistic rights, often ultimately aimed at assimilating the individual, are more readily granted than collective rights which especially in the case of Amerindian nations are increasingly (and for good reasons) being tied to political and economic rights by grassroots movements who have recognized the complex interrelationships of territoriality, ethnicity, culture, and language.

    Part III of the volume under review is entitled "Language and education". Ch. 6, "Bilingual education, literacy and the role of language in the education systems", presents the different models employed in biligual education: transitional/assimilationist, maintenance/pluralist, submersion (of the minority students in the majority language, possibly with some extra L1 classes), immersion (of majority students in the minority language), and segregationist (as a non-pluralist subtype of maintenance programs), the 1951 UNESCO recommendation that every child be taught in his or her L1 during early formal education, and Freirean literacy theory where functional literacy is seen as a means of empowerment and emancipation.

    Ch. 7, "Latin American educational policies in the struggle for linguistic rights", focuses on the educational domain where Mar- Molinero is most hopeful that the linguistic and cultural rights of indigenous communities will be granted and respected. Only the constitutions of Mexico, Peru and Bolivia explicitly stipulate that literacy be acquired in the students' L1 before transition to L2. This is why bilingual programs in the formal educational system of these three countries were chosen for closer scrutiny. From the 1930es, bilingual education was more widely introduced into the Mexican school system. At first, these programs only aimed at a rapid transition to Spanish. Since the 1970es, L1 maintenance and cultural appropriateness have been more keenly focused on but evaluators of Mexico's bilingual education programs claim that there is still a long way to go before rhetorics are put into practice. In Peru, the 1972 educational reform also basically aimed at transition to Spanish, in spite of acknowledging the indigenous cultures and languages as part of the national identity. An exception was constituted by the Puno Quechua and Aymara maintenance programs which have served as models for bilingual programs throughout Latin America, for example in Bolivia where the 1994 educational reform stipulated that all indigenous languages be both used as a medium and be taught as a subject and that Spanish speakers are also required to study indigenous languages. Adult literacy campaigns often take place as a part of a larger political agenda. After the Cuban revolution, a spectacular literacy campaign reduced illiteracy from 21 or even 24% to 3,9% in less than a year. After coming to power in 1979, the Sandinistas tried to replicate this campaign in Nicaragua. Although successful at the beginning, political and economic developments reversed the trend and illiteracy was again at 50% in 1993, just as it had been before the overthrow of the Somoza regime (p. 150, 153). On the Nicaraguan Atlantic coast, the autonomy status conferred in 1987 has lead to the creation of locally run bilingual programs. In Guatemala, too, self-determination has proved essential to the success of educational campaigns.

    Ch 8, "Politics, language and the Spanish education system", focuses on Catalonia and the Basque Country. In both regions, educational programs can be termed as successful because the numbers of speakers have increased. However, acquisition planning did not occur without friction in either community. In Catalonia, the aggressive promotion of Catalan after the end of the Franco era finally lead to a backlash by the Castilian-speaking population. In 1998, a new language policy law made Catalan the default language in education. Things are bound to get more complicate when more and more immigrants who speak neither Catalan nor Spanish arrive in Catalonia.

    Part IV, "Language politics in the new millenium: the outlook for Spanish", starts with an examination of "Spanish as a minority language" (ch. 9). Here we are, of course, talking about Spanish in the US. Latinos have probably already supplanted African Americans as the largest minority in the US. Since only very few Latinos are monolingual in Spanish, Mar-Molinero concludes (p. 185) -- perhaps a bit hastily, after all, the linguistic behavior of such groups as Mexican Americans, Cuban Americans, and Nyoricans is portrayed as quite differentiated in the literature -- that code-switching has become a mode of communication across the community. In 1967, a bill on bilingual education was passed on the federal level. But with the economic recession and the rise of Hispanophobia, counter reactions in favor of English as the only language of education, government and employment have multiplied since the early 1980es. Seventeen states have changed their constitutions to state explicitly that English is the (only) official language, and in 1998 a proposition was passed in California which abolished bilingual education. In the face of Hispanophobia, the Latino community has become increasingly united, although especially the Puerto Ricans, the first Hispanic group to arrive in the US, still constitute a special group. Puerto Rico's commonwealth status makes cycles of migration possible. This leads to a situation where the migrants feel excluded in both contexts (US and Puerto Rico) and use language as a means of demarcation in both of them: in the US, Puerto Ricans insert Spanish into their code-switching as an act of identity but when they are ridiculed for not being fluent Spanish speakers in Puerto Rico, they often use English as an in-group code of those who share the experience of returning migration. As a result, it is no longer clear whether Spanish language competence is a defining criterion of Puerto Rican-ness or not (cf. Zentella 1990).

    The final chapter of the book (ch. 10) aims at summarizing and defining the status of "Spanish in a global era". Almost paradoxically, globalization leads to unification across national borders and to fragmentation within borders. With the reforms undertaken in Spain in the post-Franco era, Spain constitutes a good example of this development. The regions have been granted relatively much autonomy which turns Spain into a model and experimentation ground for EU policies which favor decentralization and regional over national development. The central government in Madrid may fear that it will have less and less influence on their autonomous regions as EU support can be expected to increase instead of decreasing. The organizers of the1992 Olympics in Barcelona deliberately turned the event into a Catalonian, not a Spanish affair, e.g. by using Catalan before Spanish in announcements, by flying both the Catalonian and the Spanish flag, etc. (p. 40). As indicated above, Spain has been more or less successful in state-building but not in nation-building.

    The same applies to the officially Spanish-speaking Latin American states, albeit perhaps to an even smaller degree than in the case of Spain. The drawing of arbitrary borders in the making of the independent countries has lead to a situation where language is perhaps the most important defining criterion for indigenous nations (cf. p. 97). With the advent of modern communication technologies the nations thus divided by artificial borders are increasingly starting to unite across borders. Interesting alliances between minority languages and the first world language English against regional prestige languages such as Spanish in this case come into being (p. 204; cf. Calvet & Varela 2000). However, Spanish is in such a strong position in the educational systems, the media and the administration of the Spanish- speaking world as defined in this book that it is unlikely that it will be ousted from its hegemonic position. What the defenders of language purism will have to admit, however, is that Spanish has already become a pluricentric language (p. 206).

    In addition, the volume under review contains a table of contents (pp. v-vii), acknowledgements (p. viii), an introduction (pp. ix-xiii), notes to the individual chapters (pp. 207-217), a bibliography (pp. 218-230), and an index (231-242).

    Evaluation

    This book can firstly be read as an introduction into the issues around language and politics in general. Second, it can be used as a textbook for a course on the politics of language in the Spanish-speaking world. As I am teaching such a course this fall (language policy and sociology of language in Latin America), I will certainly make use of it when preparing my classes. I will also recommend it to my students because I think it is accessible to undergraduate students as well. As a matter of fact, advanced students and scholars may find the discussion a bit too superficial which, on the other hand, is inevitable given the wide scope of the topic. And usually there is an in-depth discussion of the examples chosen. As indicated above, those parts of the world are excluded from the discussion where Spanish is no longer a vital language. I think that is an unfortunate omission precisely given the scope of the discussion.

    In general, this is a well researched and well written text. However, there are a few minor errors. On p. 55, Mar-Molinero writes: "Finally, the largest influx of outsiders other than Spaniards was of course the scores of slaves taken to the Americas. Whilst the effect of African languages in contact with European languages and the phenomenon of pidgin and creoles have been widely studied, the occurrence of Spanish- based creoles in Latin America is not wide, and mostly found in parts of the Caribbean. Whereas African culture has had an enormous influence in such areas as music, food, art, and even religion, there is very little evidence of linguistic impact." First, a minor question I might ask would be if the singular in "pidgin" indicated the author's view that there is just one pidgin, not several pidgins, as they are attested from various parts of the world. Second, it would be more accurate to state that at present, two Hispanic creoles are spoken in the Circum-Caribbean region, Spanish-based Palenquero or "lengua" in Palenque de San Basilio, Colombia, and both Portuguese- and Spanish- based Papiamentu in the Netherlands' Antilles Cura�ao, Aruba and Bonaire. During the colonial period, other pidginized and creolized varieties appear to have existed e.g. in Cuba while the(present-day) scarcity of Spanish-based creoles indeed constitutes a major enigma in Creolistics (cf. McWhorter 1995). Finally, African languages certainly have had an impact on Latin American Spanish and Portuguese. If we exclude the structural (phonological, morphosyntactic) features adduced by those who try to prove the previous existence of a Pan-Caribbean creole, we still have to admit that the lexicon, admittedly the component of language structure most prone to foreign influence, has been influenced in a significant way by the languages of the African slaves brought to the New World. Semantic calques are sometimes difficult to detect. However, in a 1997 study I demonstrate that African lexemes are an integral part of the lexicon of standard Brazilian Portuguese and that especially the older Bantu items undergo productive word formation processes (Bartens-Adawonu 1997). A parallel study demonstrating that the occurrence of lexical Africanisms is not restricted to ritual cult language etc. could be done on several national varieties of Latin American Spanish. And yet, e.g. Buesa Oliver & Enguita Utrilla (1992) leave the African contribution to Latin American Spanish completely unacknowledged.

    Then, I would not claim that "Puerto Ricans ... have citizenship rights in both countries" (Puerto Rico and the US; p. 186) because readers are likely to conclude that Puerto Ricans have full citizenship rights in the US which is not the case.

    But such minor errors are bound to occur in books which are as ambitious as the volume under review and I certainly feel that I can recommend this insightful account as an introduction to the complex issues evolving around the politics of language in the Spanish-speaking world.

    References:

    Bartens-Adawonu, Angela. (1997). "Lexikalische Afrikanismen im Standardbrasilianischportugiesischen (anhand von literarischen und Pressetexten sowie des NURC-Korpus." In Ruth Degenhardt, Thomas Stolz & Hella Ulferts eds.Afrolusitanistik -- eine vergessene Disziplin in Deutschland? Dokumentation des 2. Bremer Afro-Romania Kolloquiums vom 27.-29.6.1996. (Bremer Beitr�ge zur Afro-Romania 2). Bremen: Universit�t. 97-145.

    Buesa Oliver, Tom�s & Jos� Ma. Enguita Utrilla. (1992). L�xico del espa�ol de Am�rica: su elemento patrimonial e ind�gena. Madrid: Mapfre.

    Calvet, Louis-Jean & L�a Varela. (2000). "XXIe si�cle: le cr�puscule des langues? Critique du discours Politico-Linguistiquement Correct." In Estudios de Socioling��stica 1:2. 47-64.

    Hamel, R. E. (1997). "Language conflict and language shift: a sociolinguistic framework for linguistic human rights." In International Journal of the Sociology of Language 127. 105-135.

    McWhorter, John. (1995). "The scarcity of Spanish-based creoles explained". In Language in Society 24:2. 213-244.

    Zentella, Ana Celia. (1990). "Returned migration, language and identity: Puerto Rican bilingualism in dos worlds/two mundos." In International Journal of the Sociology of Language 84. 81-101.

    Dr.phil. Angela Bartens is Docent of Iberoromance Philology at the University of Helsinki. During the academic year 2001-2002, she is also head of the Iberoromance Studies program. Her research interests include language contact, pidgins and creoles, sociolinguistics and applied sociolinguistics including language policy and language planning. She is currently working on a project financed by the Finnish Academy "A Contrastive Grammar Islander (San Andr�s and Old Providence Creole English) Caribbean Standard English-Spanish".