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Language and Poverty (www.sil.org)

submitted 11 months ago by lvxferre@lemmy.ml to c/linguistics@lemmy.ml

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Even if not solid research, I think that this article is worth sharing as food for though.

The author mentions Duncan's five faces of poverty (material, social, spiritual, aspirational and identity), then focuses on the later two, and proposes that language also plays a role in social poverty.

Superficially it might seen that the author proposes "replacive bilingualism" (i.e. linguicide) as a solution for this problem; he doesn't, he is mentioning it to highlight how individuals seek to address this linguistic poverty.

Make sure to give a check to the references cited - there's a lot of good stuff there.

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[–] schmorpel@slrpnk.net 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

This is very interesting. Something is off here for me though. I'm not sure I like this idea of calling people poor. Especially when talking about language, and social poverty, the poor seem to be blamed for being poor, while the thief who keeps taking away is conveniently forgotten. Especially from a Catholic - all about walking by side of the poor and helping the needy, nothing about the church's role in destroying native language and culture, and creating needy and poor people worldwide. Steal local abundance, to then call the now subdued locals 'culturally, socially, ambitionally poor'?

Not sure I saw any solution in there, couldn't focus on it because it just all rubbed me the wrong way. Might check the references tomorrow and give it another read.

[–] lvxferre@lemmy.ml 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Personally I don't see any problem with the words "poor" or "poverty" on their own, and IMO rephrasing them only reinforces their negative connotations. For me the issue is when, as you said, the poor are blamed for being poor - but thankfully the text doesn't do it.

The solution that the text offers is in the last paragraph. When rephrased, it boils down to:

Make sure that the language can and is used in multiple situations. At home, in work, school/uni, media, third places, etc.
Address other aspects of poverty alongside the linguistic one.

Regarding the church: I get your point and I partially agree with you, but note that in some situations the church strengthened marginalised linguistic communities. For example, the Jesuits documenting and creating orthographies for a few native languages, like Tupinambá (standardised as Old Tupi) and Guarani here in South America; IIRC Nahuatl in North America. So overall I believe that the role of the church was/is ambivalent, both to be blamed and weakly praised.