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CHAPTER NO: 3. SPEAKERS AND COMMUNITIES

Question: What are the Elements of a Typology of Speakers of Endangered Languages? OR What are the different Parameters
of Typology of Speakers? OR What are the Unique Linguistics Characteristics of Typology of Speakers?
Answer:

Introduction:
Speakers of endangered languages with their unique individual linguistic characteristics can be identified with some
DISTINCT PROFILES of speakers.
Dorian (1977, 1981) offered an initial typology that introduced the notion of Semi-Speaker, which is now considered as
emblematic of language endangerment situations. The model was extended by Dressler (1981), Campbell and Muntzel (1989),
who added sociolinguistic variables in order to introduce another type of speaker of endangered language situations which is
the Rememberer.
Grinevald (1997) and Tsunoda (2005) proposed a more complex multidimensional and dynamic model that integrates a
number of new parameters.

The parameters form four (04) distinct clusters:

1. The Language Competence Cluster
2. The Sociolinguistics Cluster
3. Performance Cluster (Use and Attitude)
4. Self-evaluation of Speakers and Linguistic Insecurity

1. The Language Competence Cluster:

It deals with the language competence of the individual speaker. The level of competence can be considered by adding
both the Level of Acquisition and the possible Degree of Individual Loss of the language. The association of the knowledge
parameter with these two parameters yields three major types of speakers:
a. Fluent Speakers (Full acquisition and no loss)
b. Semi Speakers (Partial acquisition and possible loss)
c. Terminal Speakers (Limited acquisition but advance loss)

2. The Sociolinguistics Cluster:

This second parameter particularly deals with the language versus vitality of language at the time of acquisition. It also
deals with the factors that situate the individual speakers within particular endangered language communities at a particular
time and at a particular phase in the process of decline of the language.
The sociolinguistic factor of the Level of Vitality of the Endangered Language must therefore be cross-tabulated with
the Date of Birth of the Individual Speaker. When the speaker was born at that time the language was endangered or extremely
endangered and it determines how much exposure to the language was possible and what opportunities were available to learn
and use it particularly at the early period of language acquisition.

3. Performance Cluster (Use and Attitude):

The third cluster of parameters takes into account the relation of the individual speaker to the endangered language
community. It requires assessing the Level of Use of the Language and the Attitudes of the individual speaker toward the
language. It is obvious that both use and attitude will have an impact on the level of competence and it also constrain usage and
influence the attitude of the speaker.

4. Self-evaluation of Speakers and Linguistic Insecurity:

The final major parameter has a psycholinguistic nature, linked to the complex process of self-evaluation by speakers.
One of the essential traits of many speakers of endangered languages is a profound sense of Linguistic Insecurity and this
insecurity can extend to total denial of any knowledge of the language.
A particular type of speaker has been identified around this extreme phenomenon of self-denial that is Ghost Speaker.

Concluding Remarks:
It is therefore proposed that, in order to establish common profiles of speakers of endangered languages, one would
need to handle a number of parameters of different natures and consider their interrelations.
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Question: What is the Basic Typology OR Types of Speakers of Endangered Languages?

Answer:

Introduction:
Speakers of a vital language normally present great diversity in their knowledge, attitude and talent for working on
their language. The situation is always much more complex when dealing with different typology of speakers of endangered
languages.

There are three major types of speakers identified mentioned below:

1. Fluent Speakers
2. Semi-Speakers
3. Terminal Speakers

There are further well defined and widely acknowledged types of speakers are:
4. Rememberers
5. Ghost Speakers
6. Neo Speakers
7. Last Speakers

1. Fluent Speakers:
Fluent speakers can speak fluently and they are expressive. Sometimes fluent speakers are referred as Traditional
Speakers due to their conservative forms of language. There are further two subtypes in situations of endangered languages.
The so-called “Old” Fluent Speakers who may be monolinguals, certainly dominant in their ethnic language, in contrast to
“Young” Fluent Speakers, who are bilinguals with great fluency and mastery of the ethnic language that they have generally
learned as their first language.

2. Semi Speakers:
The category of the Semi-Speakers is the most emblematic of situations of language endangerment. It is a large
category which includes all members of the community with appropriate receptive skills in the language, but varying levels of
productive skills. Semi speakers are bilinguals whose dominant language is not the ethnic language. They generally do not use
the language regularly and naturally because they do not have regular conversational partners in the endangered language.
They all share however a good mastery of the socio-linguistic norms of the language and capable of producing greetings, short
standard answers and laughing at the humor.

3. Terminal Speakers:
These are the speakers of the dominant language who may know some phrases, or simply some words of the
endangered language. They may however be considered as members of the language community, Terminal speakers are the last
generation of that language. Further they only know frozen fixed expressions. There are no more old fluent speakers and the
oldest speakers left.

4. Rememberers:
This last category corresponds to speakers who once in their life-time had a better knowledge of the language, but due
to repression they lost much of that knowledge. They were forced to abandon using the language in some traumatic
circumstances and have subsequently lost fluency in it e.g. Kurdish Language in Kurd and in Spain there is a Basque Language.
There is no longer use of language due to repression.

5. Ghost Speakers:
Ghost speakers are those who just deliberately deny any knowledge of the endangered language although they have
some level of competency. They deny just because of a strong negative attitude towards the language.

6. Neo Speakers:
This type of speakers has not been referenced in the literature but they are becoming central to language revitalization,
whose aim is partly to produce this kind of speaker. Neo speakers are the new learners of endangered language in the context of
revitalization and activities. Hebrew is a dead language but it was learnt by the Jews as a second language.

7. Last Speakers:
This category does not belong to typology of speakers of endangered languages but due to the social and political
status we still remain in touch with them. They are the strong personalities and considered as traditional old fluent speaker by
the community.
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Question: Endangered Languages Communities in many different Configurations created by Different Factors? What are they?
Illustrate with Example.
Answer:

ENDANGERED LANGUAGE COMMUNITIES can be situated in deserts or tropical forests and some are identifiable
communities in old settlements on ancestral lands.

There are some factors which are mentioned below:

1. Well Defined Communities (Community of Villages) (Endangered Languages Identifiable):

Endangered language communities can be located in well defied territories like in a particular village where different
communities gave generally been gathered through forced movement and settlement. In many parts of the world today
endangered language communities are pressing legal demands for the recognition of their ancestral territories. Endangered
language communities are sometimes located in small isolated villages. These communities are almost always multilingual.

2. Transnational Territories:
From a geographical point of view endangered language communities are often found in transnational territories for
two major reasons.
a. They survived better away from urban centres of colonization near the borders.
b. Political borders were often drawn arbitrarily and cutting through ancestral territories.
For example: This is a common feature of Amazonian indigenous language communities. Bradford in England

3. Immigration (Mobility):
Another major trait of endangered language communities is their mobility through migration and urbanization within a
country as well as through transnational migrations. The majority of an endangered language population can actually have
become urbanized.
For example: This is a common situation for African and Native American communities. Vancouver City in Canada

4. Diaspora Communities:
It is primarily used to refer to a group of people, bound together by a common ethno-linguistic, who no longer reside in
their home country. Some home villages are practically drained of their workforce and a large proportion of the
population (re)forms a new community in some faraway country. There are even cases where the language survives better in
such diaspora communities than back home (as a result of increased wealth, changed attitudes and ideologies, and the influence
of the attitudes and ideologies of the surrounding communities).

Conclusion:
Endangered language communities thus take many shapes and can be found in many different configurations. They are
not always small communities isolated in the jungle as much media coverage tends to project. When not in well-defined
territories, they can be hard to locate and hard to reach. In the case of urbanization, they may be hard to identify.
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Question: Difference between Language Communities and Speech Communities and what is the Context of Endangered
Languages in Communities?
Answer:

Language Communities:

Introduction:
A language community is a group of people who use similar norms and terms for communication. Although some minor
variations may exist within a community, they are usually not major. Whenever there are a large number of differences in
communication style, it is likely that the people who are communicating are from different language communities. An
interesting aspect about language is that it is shaped by the ways in which people choose to use it. In other words, sometimes a
new term or expression can get added to a dictionary if enough people use it frequently enough in a given society.

Standardized Form:
The language communities of the largest languages of the world are recognized with a high level through extensive
processes of standardization, with written norms that serve as common reference. These languages are usually taught and
reinforced through formal education. At the opposite end of the continuum, endangered languages or minority languages are
not yet identified as languages, may have no name, no written tradition and no standardization.

Speech Communities:

Introduction:
Speech communities are sociolinguistic entities rather than purely linguistic ones. It is not necessary that all the
members of a speech community speak the same way, or even have the same language.

Monolingual Society:
Monolingual communities are more the exception than the rule around the world. Speech communities are
communities of speakers in regular contact, who follow more or less established rules of communication dictating which
language to speak to whom, when and where.
For example: Kalahari Bushman

Multilingual Society:
Speech communities are commonly multilingual communities with complex language contact situations with extensive
practices of code switching. Speech communities can be found at all levels of social organization. Nuclear as well as extended
families (joint families) constitute speech communities. Immigrant families that have settled in Europe participate in multilingual
speech communities. Market-places in multilingual towns are speech communities too. A nation, with its official language(s),
and its laws on language(s) of education and public affairs is, at another level, a speech community.
For example: Singapore

Context of Endangered Languages in Communities:

If the notion of ‘language’ is a matter of controversy, even for larger languages, it is a particularly complex issue with
endangered languages in terms of language as an autonomous entity, clearly bounded and defined. Linguists may often have
difficulties establishing the boundaries of an endangered language, due to lack of description of these languages and the
absence of the kind of social consensus that writing traditions and accompanying standardization processes provide.
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Question: What are the different problems created by different types of speakers and which factor create difficulty to
establish endangered language communities?
Answer:

Speakers themselves may have even more difficulty in identifying such languages as ‘languages’ for any number of
reasons.
In the first place, they might not even see them as ‘real’ languages, but think of them rather as ‘jargon’, ‘lenguas’,
‘patois’, ‘slang’ without grammar; and, even if they think of it as ‘their’ language, they are in general more conscious of local
differences than of commonalities they share with neighboring dialects of the same language.
The great variety of types of speakers also makes it more difficult to establish what endangered language communities
are:

1. Where to draw the boundaries of the community:

The first issue is where to draw the boundaries of the community, in the sense of which types of speakers are included
or not and whether there is a consensus about who belongs and who does not belong to the language community.

2. Self – Categorization:
Another reason for difficulty in establishing the boundaries of an endangered language community is linked to
processes of self - categorization. Some speakers may hide their competence and refuse to be considered members of the
community of speakers.

3. Shift to a language of wider communication:

New areas for language use may emerge as community living conditions change. While some language communities do
succeed in expanding their own language into the new domain, most do not. Schools, new work environments, new media,
including broadcast media and the Internet, usually serve only to expand the scope and power of the dominant language at the
expense of endangered languages. The use of the dominant language in the new domain has mesmerizing power. If the
communities do not meet the challenges of modernity with their language, it becomes increasingly irrelevant and stigmatized.

4. Number of speakers reduction:

Members of a speech community are not usually neutral towards their own language. They may see it as essential to
their community and identity and promote it; they may use it without promoting it; they may be ashamed of it and, therefore,
not promote it; or they may see it as a nuisance and actively avoid using it.

5. Small community:
Social networks of endangered language users inexorably dissolve into micro-networks and they are creating an
atomized community.

Conclusion:
Communities identifying with endangered languages share an ancestral or heritage language and include marginal or
non speakers. An endangered language community includes all the different kinds of speakers who identify with that language,
from last speakers to their family members and support the projects of revitalization. The notion of ancestral language
community is particularly important in the case of revitalization efforts for endangered languages.