Theme and scope

Language plays an integral role in multicultural societies across the globe, as both governments and civilians negotiate how different cultures can coexist and understand each other (Lo Bianco, 2017). In this colloquium, we centre the role of socio-political factors and their interplay with languages in society. In contexts of war and conflict, be they civil war or threat of war, colonisation, political repression, marginalisation, persecution or resistance, the status of particular languages becomes vulnerable. However, when a language and its users are threatened, this can lead to innovative and empowering ways to maintain that language.

We aim to create a forum to showcase how languages endure linguistic marginalisation and persecution and how users create strategies to safeguard their languages; to promote peacebuilding and reconciliation through language in contexts of conflict; to bring together different perspectives to share theoretical and methodological considerations suited to this field of inquiry.

We have a diverse range of contexts from Asia, Europe and the Pacific covering Indigenous, minority and marginalised language. Themes encapsulate issues including the impact of war and conflict on languages (and their users); language policy in post-war contexts; grass-roots language movements in resistance to hegemony; sociolinguistic perspectives of conflict and marginalisation.

Abstracts

Our proposed total time for the colloquium is 165 minutes. If it is possible, we would like an extra long time slot for the colloquium so that we can incorporate productive group discussion.

1.     Colonisation

a.     Translanguaging as support for addressing language trauma in Indigenous spaces

Corinne Seals, Victoria University of Wellington

Vincent Olsen-Reeder, Victoria University of Wellington

Shanara Wallace, Victoria University of Wellington

In contexts of colonisation, language trauma remains a powerful force that continues to impact repressed individuals and their ancestors for generations (Pihama et al, 2014). This trauma persists long past active language repression efforts in the form of limited access to language learning and maintenance resources, language anxiety and loss of mana due to language shift and loss, and ongoing societal discrimination (Olsen-Reeder, 2021; Te Huia, 2022). Our presentation focuses on the complexities involved in navigating generational language trauma in a politically charged space where learners and instructors must walk a difficult line between language reclamation and linguistic purism. In particular, we consider the challenges and benefits of translanguaging in our context in Aotearoa New Zealand with te reo Māori.

Our research draws upon our ongoing ethnographic work since 2017 with Māori language educational spaces through the Wellington Translanguaging Project and Translanguaging Aotearoa. We use a community-responsive methodology, narratives of personal experience, and thematic and discourse analysis of over 200 hours of audio and video recorded data to argue in-depth for the value of translanguaging for recognising and responding to language anxiety and language trauma, both collective and individual. Through translanguaging in Indigenous language(s) educational spaces, harmful ideologies that are the result of settler-colonialism can be dismantled, supporting community and individual efforts to acknowledge and transcend language trauma, reclaiming access to Indigenous languages and identities.

2.     War

a.     Experiencing the uninhabited traumascape of a divided capital: An ethnographic investigation of Nicosia’s UN-controlled buffer zone (online presentation)

Christiana Themistocleous, University of Reading

Çise Çavuşoğlu, Near East University

Cyprus and Nicosia, its capital, have been divided since the 1974 war. A buffer zone divides the two communities and is controlled by the UN Peace Keeping Force. It has abandoned buildings scarred from the war, physical borders consisting of barbed wire, sandbags and barrels. All these objects serve as tangible evidence of division and make this space a dystopic traumascape.

After 30 years of complete separation, the ease of movement restrictions in 2003 saw Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots crossing into each other’s community through various crossing-points across the buffer zone. The Ledras/Lokmacı crossing-point in central Nicosia is the focus of this investigation.

Recent research shows that the language of the other, namely Greek and Turkish, are excluded from each community’s Linguistic Landscape (LL), which according to Themistocleous (2019) and Themistocleous, Çavuşoglu & Özkara (2023) reflects nationalist ideologies. However, the LL of the Ledras/Lokmacı crossing-point is different, as multilingual signs that contain the language of the other are displayed on the abandoned buildings of the buffer zone. These seem to challenge nationalist ideologies, establishing connections among the two communities (Themistocleous, 2020; 2021).  

This study builds on this previous work. It explores further the traumascape of the buffer zone, obtaining in this case insights from local residents, aiming to understand how they experience and evaluate the space in no man’s land. Walking-tour semi-structured interviews were conducted with 36 Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot participants representing three generations (60+; 30-40; 18-23). Participants walked along the Ledras/Lokmacı crossing-point in pairs, and as they moved across the space, they observed the LL and discussed with the researcher their thoughts, feelings, ideologies and attitudes.

A qualitative analysis of the data revealed that responses to the LL are complex and fluid within and between groups. Contradicting responses can be attributed to complexity of the traumascape itself,  as well as the participants’ past experiences, psychological and emotional complexities and their political and ideological stances in relation to the conflict.

b.     Linguistic reconciliation in contexts of conflict: the role of language learning

Niru Perera, Curtin University

In multicultural and multilingual societies across the globe, the language question has been central to notions of unity and equity. This is especially so in contexts of war based on ethnolinguistic division. In the post-war period, processes of transitional justice need to be oriented to the central role of language as a part of peacebuilding and reconciliation. Our study pays attention to the notion of linguistic reconciliation and examines how language learning contributes to post-war peacebuilding.

We focus on the island nation of Sri Lanka, a powerful case study because it was a discriminatory language policy (known as the Sinhala Only Policy of 1956) that disadvantaged minority groups, with Tamils being the main one, and contributed to a 26-year-long civil war. Since the war ended in 2009, the role of language equality is critical to progressing social cohesion, however there is little meaningful government engagement with the issue and this has impacted on citizen’s acceptance of Tamil as an official language of the nation.

In this context, it is left up to grassroots or individually-driven initiatives to bridge the Tamil language gap. Our study focussed on an innovative online adult Tamil language course in Sri Lanka and involved qualitative interviews with students and teachers of varying ethnicities and language backgrounds. We used reflexive thematic analysis to answer the following research questions:

1. What are the language learning motivations and experiences of adults in post-war contexts?
2. In post-war contexts, what is the impact of language politics, war and trauma, and language policy on learners’ motivations and experiences?

Our findings promote the concept of linguistic reconciliation in post-war transitional processes; as well as contribute new considerations for language learning motivation theories in contexts of conflict.

c.     Embodied Language, Experience, and Ideologies: War-Displaced Ukrainians in New Zealand

Corinne Seals, Victoria University of Wellington

Oleksii Stepura, Victoria University of Wellington

Sara Kind, Victoria University of Wellington

Maja Krtalić, Victoria University of Wellington

Mary Bucholtz, University of California, Santa Barbara

In contxts of war and displacement, people find themselves having to suddenly renegotiate sociolinguistic identities, often under traumatic conditions. The trauma of this displacement and the effort to find a place of belonging in a hostland refuge bring many complex, interwoven language ideologies and practices to the fore. This presentation focuses on our work with displaced Ukrainians arriving in New Zealand on the Special Ukraine Visa following the February 2022 mass-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia. In particular, this presentation focuses on the ways in which language, experience, and ideologies are embodied and what we can learn about displaced persons’ negotiations of identity through this embodiment.

For this presentation, we focus on interviews with ten displaced Ukrainians finding refuge with Ukrainian-New Zealander family members in New Zealand. The interviews consisted of narratives, neighbourhood walks, reflections on the linguistic landscape, participant photography, and linguistic identity portraits (e.g. Seals, 2017). Focusing on the linguistic identity portraits, while also being informed by the other accompanying data, we show via discourse analysis and semiotic analysis how participants make sense of their war and refuge experiences with and through language and the body (Bucholtz & Hall, 2016).  Furthermore, we reflect upon the importance of embodied understandings of language and identity (cf. Seals, 2019) both for helping the researchers understand participants’ experiences as well as helping participants work through traumatic pasts and uncertain futures. 

3.     Marginalisation

a.     Language maintenance through language naming and decolonisation

Chia-Ying Yang, The University of Edinburgh

In the multilingual and multicultural societies that we now live in, conflicts and marginalisation are often observed instead of harmony. Through the lens of language, languages and their users may experience suppression and marginalisation in contexts of conflict. However, language can also play a critical role in harmony building. This study explores language marginalisation, focusing on a threatened local language – Daighi, in the context of Taiwan.

Taiwan is a multilingual society, and Daighi, along with other local languages, is going through intergenerational language shift (Census 2020; Tiun, 2020), which can be traced back to its sociocultural history (Yang 2020). Coming from a language maintenance perspective, this study sets out to address the issue of multiple names used to refer to Daighi in the literature and proposes an approach to make Daighi more visible while advocating for linguistic equality and harmony building.

To explore the names used in the literature to refer to Daighi and the rationale behind its naming, this study draws on a systematic literature review as its main research method, and discourse analysis as the main analytical framework. The study then proposes and justifies how using Daighi as the name to refer to the language is a way to decolonise and demarginalize local languages like Daighi and promote language equality in a multilingual society like Taiwan.

b.     Access, Visibility, and Capacity: Language inclusion in the Australian context

Alice Chik, Macquarie University 

As a multicultural and multilingual country, Australia does not have an official national language policy. English is only the de facto national language while the people of Australia collectively use over 400 languages other than English. In the face of super diversity, how do government agencies support social and language inclusion? Working towards social inclusion involves continuous commitment and improvement. Service providers need to provide communications in relevant minority languages, rather than expecting all community members to be proficient in the majority language. Difficulties with the majority language can act as a significant barrier to social participation for CALD community members. In this presentation, we investigate social inclusion for culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities in New South Wales through the analysis of the communication strategies of a Local Government Area (LGA) website. Against this background, we ask whether community-facing government resources are inclusive and accessible to CALD communities. To this end, we conducted a language inclusion survey and readability assessment of an LGA website which services a diverse language speaker population. The data from these sources is integrated with data on the demographics of the relevant LGA from the 2021 census. Our findings showed that how and why the government website is challenging for a diversifying population. We will discuss the implications for marginalised and emerging cultural and linguistic communities. Finally, we will suggest recommendations for similar community-facing organisations serving linguistically diverse communities.