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Revitalizing Endangered Languages

Edited by Justyna Olko & Julia Sallabank

Revitalizing Endangered Languages "This guidebook provides ideas and strategies, as well as some background, to help with the effective revitalization of endangered languages. It covers a broad scope of themes including effective planning, benefits, wellbeing, economic aspects, attitudes and ideologies."


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Academic Paper


Title: Disaster linguicism: Linguistic minorities in disasters
Author: Shinya Uekusa
Linguistic Field: Discourse Analysis; Sociolinguistics
Abstract: Language is a means of communication but it functions as much more than this in social life. In emergencies and disasters, it can also be a matter of life and death. Language barriers and effective communication in disaster contexts (i.e. distributing critical disaster information and warnings) are the central concern in current disaster research, practice, and policy. However, based on the data drawn from qualitative interviews with linguistic minority immigrants and refugees in Canterbury, New Zealand and Miyagi, Japan, I argue that linguistic minorities confront unique disaster vulnerability partly due to linguicism—language-based discrimination at multiple levels. As linguicism is often compounded by racism, it is not properly addressed and analyzed, using the framework of language ideology and power. This article therefore introduces the concept of disaster linguicism, employing Pierre Bourdieu's concept of symbolic violence, to explore linguistic minorities’ complex disaster experiences in the 2010–2011 Canterbury and Tohoku disasters.

CUP AT LINGUIST

This article appears IN Language in Society Vol. 48, Issue 3, which you can READ on Cambridge's site .

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