Legislating the mother tongue: Language, the individual and the state.

Abstract

Mother-tongue is a term commonly used to refer to the first language learned by a child in the home. The term invokes the imagery of nurture, family, heritage and identity. The concept of a national language is one which parallels, on a much larger scale, the notion of mother tongue. A national language appeals in similar ways to a sense of community and belonging, but it does so by speaking to a national community united around common values and shared political aspirations. Language policy is that which negotiates the space between mother tongue and national language. It changes, moulds or supplants the first to forge the second. This dissertation is about the ways in which language policy moves in that space between individual and national languages and identities. Many states formulate legislation and policies to enhance, preserve, or protect particular languages in particular contexts. This legislation and policy is often seen as functional and pragmatic--part of a larger political compromise--or as a reflection of a status quo or the will of the people. This dissertation problematizes language policy by breaking down the distance between the formal, legal and institutional trappings of language policy, and the more complex dimensions of language as a vehicle of culture and as a marker of individual identity. The broad nationalist agenda for most language policy, and the claims to pragmatism and necessity which accompany such policies are thus examined in light of the impact of language policy on individuals and communities. In this work, the particular focus is on the impact of the nationalization of language and culture on non-dominant linguistic and cultural groups within the nation-state. This theme plays against a backdrop which has become all to familiar of late: that of collapsing frontiers, mass global immigration, and increasing ethnic nationalism.