Education for Separatism: The Belgian Experience

Swing, Elizabeth S.

doi:10.1007/978-1-4684-4235-9_13

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…A consciousness of dierence gives strength to the claim of separate identity, separate nationality, and, therefore, more regional autonomy or even a separate country for a subnational group. Some of the better-known cases of resistance LT are the teaching of Welsh in Wales to prevent it from dying out (Khlief 1976(Khlief , 1986; the teaching of Catalan in Catalonia, Spain, where Franco's policy of suppressing that language had created tremendous popular resentment (Mar-Molinero 1989; Grant and Docherty 1992); the teaching of Dutch to the Flemish population in Belgium (Swing 1982); the teaching of French in Quebec after 1982 (Martel 1996;Fortier 1994); and the teaching of Hebrew in Israel (King 1997: 31). In Algeria, under French rule, while most schools were French-medium ones, there was an underground movement led by Arabic-medium institutions against French control (Kelly 1982).…”

Section: Empowerment Through Resistancementioning

confidence: 98%

Language-learning and power: a theoretical approach

Rahman¹

2001

International Journal of the Sociology of Language

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This article calls language-learning the demand for a language in a certain social situation, while teaching refers to its supply. Both learning and teaching policies and strategies, whether of individuals, groups, or organized bodies like the state and dissident language activists, are ultimately connected with power. Individuals and groups generally learn the language of the domains of power because they want to empower themselves through employment. Sometimes, however, groups (ethnic, nationalistic etc.) may challenge the dominant language and teach the one they regard as a group identity symbol in a bid to change the prevalent power relations in a society. This is called resistance or ethnic language-teaching. Then there is ideological language-teaching by the state. Its purpose is to create legitimacy for the ruling elite and its ideology within the country so as to reduce resistance and to disseminate that ideology abroad as part of the projection of state power. These three major motivations for learning and teaching languages are predominantly rational, though extrarational elements are part of the motivation of actors in undeterminable ways. Learning a language for pleasure or other emotional reasons, not apparently connected with power, falls into the realm of the predominantly extrarational realm, which is not explored in this article.

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