Tue 8 May 2007
The Budget and Language (updated)
Posted by jangari under Environment, Indigenous, Linguistics, Politics
[11] Comments
Tonight is Federal Budget night in Australia, and as expected “mums and dads” around the country will be better off (but not my mum and dad, I can assure you). There have also been leaks from Canberra that several other areas will enjoy increased funding in the coming financial year. One commentator this morning claimed that ‘all sectors would receive a boost’.
Aboriginal housing, health and education will receive an extra billion dollars, which I applaud in particular, I just hope it finds its way to the people that need it most. But I suspect something that won’t receive much extra will be the difficult to categorise area of language research, documentation and revitalisation.
A quick Google search shows that the revitalisation of indigenous languages in Australia falls under the scope of the Department of the Environment and Heritage, as a part of their ‘cultural heritage’ department. But a brief perusal of their website fails to return any pages related to indigenous languages dated any time after 2001, apart from the odd reference in non-related pages. Has cultural heritage been shifted to another department since 2001?
I’m asking this earnestly. I have no idea which department represents my interests in indigenous languages in Australia, and I think I should know.
Sadly, this is an election year. I think we can expect a huge amount of money being spent on tax-cuts and other such electoral sweeteners, we’ll also see extended rebates for the installation of solar panels and perhaps some other measures designed to tap into the populations concern over climate change. But I don’t think we’ll see a great deal of extra funding for things that aren’t quite as prominent in people’s minds such as the rapid and irreversible loss of languages and culture in Aboriginal Australia.
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<update>
May 9: Did anyone notice anything conspicuously missing from the budget speech? Is it just me or was there a marked absence of any announcements relating to that leaked extra billion for Aboriginal housing, health and education?
I thought at first that Costello just neglected to mention it. Cooper raised the issue in an email as well, and then I saw this report, which points out that there doesn’t seem to be anything in this budget for the indigenous population beyond token gestures. And this is straight after a World Health Organisation report that Australia’s Aboriginal population are experiencing living standards not seen in the west in one hundred years.
This government needs to work on priorities.
</update>
May 8th, 2007 at 10:50 am
As romantic as it is to preserve indigenous language I suspect that for many of them it is just too late as they have declined past the point where they will have enough speakers for them to be sustained. I tend to think that more energy (and Money) should be expended to ensure that all indigenous people are fully competent in English because that is the price for a place in the wider community and a chance at a better future.
May 8th, 2007 at 11:23 am
For a lot of people Iain, protecting the language in which they’re cultural identity is encoded is not merely ‘romantic’, rather it is as important to most Aboriginal people as it is for other people to be able to return to their own country. Imagine you were prevented from entering England. That’s the sort of loss of identity that language death entails.
I agree that money should be spent ensuring aboriginal people are competent in English, but that should not detract from the retention of indigenous languages.
From a less interpersonal point of view, linguistic and cultural diversity is intrinsically valuable in my opinion, and should be protected.
May 8th, 2007 at 1:37 pm
Oh I do understand why you see intrinsic value in indigenous languages Jangari but the point I was making is really about the required critical mass of speakers for a language to truly survive. Surly that is what you have learnt from your study of linguistics?
May 8th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
I take your point, but conversely one might argue that proportionally more resources should go into languages that are most threatened, those with the fewest speakers, on the basis that those with healthy numbers of speakers have a while to go before they get to a state in which they’d be described as ‘endangered’, if they ever do.
The opposing point of view, that whatever resources are available should be pumped into those languages where positive results are more certain, to the detriment of those with the odds most certainly not in their favour, is defeatist in my opinion. I think there is a real imperative to record and document as much of the highly endangered and moribund languages as is physically possible. The more data there is collected, the more chance that a grammar and dictionary can be reconstructed later, and it has been done before. To simply give up on a language because the outlook ain’t so good is just not fair on its speakers and other members of the linguistic community.
May 8th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
Iain, why an either-or model?
No one is arguing against the critical mass point, no-one is arguing that English isn’t important. But why should we refuse speakers of Indigenous languages resources to document and revitalise their languages simply because we don’t think they’re going to shift back to using them full time, or because we’ve bought into the ill-founded view that such a process would ‘interfere’ with their learning English?
After all, no one *speaks* Latin anymore, but a lot of people put effort into learning it still, and most of us would agree there is cultural and intellectual merit in doing so. So it is with Aboriginal languages. Not everything comes down to economic rationalism, nor is economic rationalism the movitating factor behind all our actions.
May 8th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
Jangari & Bulanjdjan I suppose it really gets down to matter of triage (if I can use a medical metaphor) that some times may be to the detriment of those who stand a chance of survival to expend too many resources on those who don’t have a chance of being sustained. By all means lets record what you can of their respective lexicons but to expect that the least viable languages to survive as living languages is really an impossible dream.
Bulanjdjan on your point about Latin it will survive for a long time yet despite it no longer being spoken because it is a foundation tongue for so many European languages and it is a written language that does not rely on just oral transmission. As many aboriginal tongues do. Even today there are more people studying Latin in the world than there are studying the languages that interest you guys. Critical mass again I suppose.
May 8th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
Tough one. At the end of the day there is only so much money in a budget.
But still, from the way you have explained it, this is a finite proces, right? I.E if a dictionary and grammar are all that’s required to keep a language ‘alive’, then once it’s written, that’s it…right?
And then the overhead costs of tutoring people in the language would, in theory, be substantially lower than the costs required to research the language.
In that case extra funding should be a no-brainer.
The Latin analogy doesn’t hold up, though, as people learn that to read all of the works written in Latin throughout history, of which there are many.
May 8th, 2007 at 5:41 pm
And check your email Jangari! I demand a response :p
May 8th, 2007 at 11:40 pm
The triage metaphor is still an either-or scenario which, I agree with Bulanjdjan, doesn’t need apply.
Also, don’t underestimate the value and importance of a language that is on the verge of being lost or isn’t spoken anymore… they are held dear to many people who have lost or are losing their language. If ‘the muslims’ arrived tomorrow and our language became arabic, wouldn’t we be a bit resentful and wouldn’t english always hold a special place in our collective psyche? that’s probably something like what people feel like who are from the over 200 different Indigenous cultural/language groups who have pretty much lost their language.
but back to the budget and current politics.. when the government is bringing back assimilationist policies, black people have fuck all chance that there’ll be any improvement in something that white people don’t understand.
oh, and the deparment that looks after Indigenous Languages is DCITA.
May 9th, 2007 at 12:15 am
One other problem is what counts as “viable” – for example, Gurr-goni has only had about 60 speakers for the last 100 or more years, but it’s stable, kids are learning it as a first language, along with Gunwinygu, Burarra, and English. On the other hand, some languages with thousands (or even tens of thousands) of speakers are seriously under threat because kids have switched.
May 9th, 2007 at 10:33 am
Iain, concerning your triage argument, my philosophy regarding things such as diversity – be it cultural, linguistic, environmental or biological – boils down to the foremost protection of languages/species that are most under threat. The fewer members of a set there are (proportional to the normative situation, re: Claire’s comment), the more threatened it is and the more worthy it is of protection.
Conversely, the more there is of something, the less you need to protect it. This is where environmental ethics heavily disagrees with animal-rights ethics. The hardened environmentalist would claim that individuals are less important than the species as a whole, and that biodiversity is more important still. An animal rights ethicist on the other hand would want to protect individual animals’ rights even if the biodiversity of the environment suffers.
This is all getting a bit off track, but my point is that given an either-or situation, which, Gagu, Bulanjdjan, I agree completely, doesn’t/shouldn’t have to be the case, I would primarily throw resources at the most severe situation. Would that be a waste of money? I don’t know, depends on your opinion. Is it an economic or cost/benefit issue in the first place? I don’t think it should be.
And Wamut, similarly, do not underestimate the comparative benefit of attempting to record as much as one can of a language with only one speaker. You may provide the only surviving record of such a language. Such data is absolutely invaluable. Also, thanks for the info on DCITA.
And yes Claire, I was going to bring that up, but I thought it was obvious. I don’t know what the numbers would have been, but I’d take a stab in the dark and say that it would have been uncommon for an Australian language, pre-contact, to have more than, say, 200 speakers? Any
bettermore educated guesses, people?