{"id":860,"date":"2010-01-03T10:54:56","date_gmt":"2010-01-03T10:54:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wp\/wordpress\/book-review-minority-language-media-concepts-critiques-and-case-studies\/"},"modified":"2018-10-26T08:16:00","modified_gmt":"2018-10-26T08:16:00","slug":"book-review-minority-language-media-concepts-critiques-and-case-studies","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/kurdishacademy.org\/?page_id=860","title":{"rendered":"Book Review; Minority Language Media: Concepts, Critiques and Case Studies"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Jaffer Sheyholislami<\/a>, Carleton University, Dec 2009<\/p>\n

Minority languages have been oppressed, denied, and neglected for a long time, and their decline is accelerating. Whereas estimates show that half of the world\u2019s languages disappeared from 1450 to 1950, half of the remaining 6000 to 7000 languages could disappear in this century alone. Some observers include globalization and new media technologies among the factors contributing to this extinction. Some others, however, see new media, such as satellite television and the Internet, as the salvation of minority languages.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"Jaffer Sheyholislami<\/a>, Carleton University, Dec 2009<\/p>\n

Minority languages have been oppressed, denied, and neglected for a long time, and their decline is accelerating. Whereas estimates show that half of the world\u2019s languages disappeared from 1450 to 1950, half of the remaining 6000 to 7000 languages could disappear in this century alone. Some observers include globalization and new media technologies among the factors contributing to this extinction. Some others, however, see new media, such as satellite television and the Internet, as the salvation of minority languages.
\n
\nThis book is a solid and major contribution to our understanding of the complex relationship between media, language maintenance, and language development. Although the book mainly focuses on Western Europe, its eclectic range of topics could resonate with minority language situations around the world. The book serves the editors\u2019 ambitious project: to establish minority language media as a discrete field of study connected to, but independent of, media studies, and applied linguistics or sociolinguistics.<\/p>\n

Initially developed out of the First Mercator International Symposium on Minority Languages and Research, a 2003 symposium sponsored by the European Commission, the book consists of fourteen chapters. In addition to the excellent introductory and concluding chapters by editors Mike Cormack and Niamh Hourigan, there are twelve chapters organized into two sections. The first section sets the context, describing key terms (e.g., minority language), presenting a rich literature review of the field, and mapping the theoretical and methodological issues. This section also furnishes an insightful analysis of networks of campaigns for minority television, the \u201cknowledge economy\u201d of digital media and its implications for minority language media, and recording the history of minority language broadcasting. The second section contains incisive case studies featuring more specific issues: the empowering affordances of the Internet for minority cultures, the crucial role of local television in the Basque Country and Catalonia in language normalization (\u201cthe recovery of public use of [the minority] language in all fields\u201d) (p. 171), the representational affordances of local television in Wales, emphasizing the linguistic aspects of minority media production (e.g. translation, dubbing and subtitling), and finally, the struggle for putting sign language on British television.<\/p>\n

A common thread that connects these chapters is the belief that it is important to maintain and develop minority languages and the stance that the media have a crucial role to play in maintaining and developing minority languages. Minority language media are deemed important for: a) their symbolic role in acknowledging that minority cultures can deal with the contemporary world; b) their ability to legitimate the existence of the language that they use; c) their potential to provide an \u201ceconomic boost\u201d for those who are interested in working in the minority language; d) their instrumentality in engendering a public sphere within a language community; e) their resourcefulness in enabling minorities to represent their community, not only within itself but also to outsiders instead of being re-presented by \u201cothers\u201d; f) their capability to be conveyers of cultures and producers of cultural products; and g) their capability to magnify discursive practices of identity construction.<\/p>\n

The book also reveals an array of challenges faced by minority language media and their advocates. For example, Daniel Cunliffe notes, not all minorities have access to or are able to own and use new media, and if they do, the increase in minority language media is outpaced by an even faster increase of media in the dominant language, as suggested by Cormack. Cormack also reminds us that the media, because of their need to attract advertising revenue, often favour large audiences and thus the majority language markets. It is also problematic, according to him, if minority media are not able to attract audiences and make connections with the speakers of the language.<\/p>\n

Another strength of the book is its ability to strike a balance between the position that perceives digital media as instruments of English hegemony, and the position that sees new media as the saviours of minority languages. For example, whereas Daniel Cunliffe in his chapter \u201cMinority Languages and the Internet: New Threats, New Opportunities,\u201d looks at the affordances of the Internet and how some online tools can enable minority language speakers to change their role from consumers of majority media to producers of minority media content, in her chapter, \u201cMedia Policy and Language Policy in Catalonia,\u201d Maria Corominas Piulats raises the concern with respect to Catalonians\u2019 frequent use of online content in English instead of their first language. As another example, Cunliffe, on the one hand, expresses optimism that \u201ca real opportunity exists for those languages that have the resources and the determination to make the transition to the Internet\u201d (p. 147); on the other, he suggests that although Internet research can be very challenging, much more research is needed to identify actual utilization of online resources that could best serve minorities.<\/p>\n

One of the limits, but not necessarily a weakness, of this book is its narrow focus on \u201cindigenous\u201d minority languages in Western Europe, a focus that excludes \u201cimmigrant languages\u201d not to mention minority languages around the world (for an insightful discussion that addresses some aspects of this research gap see pp. 249-253). Donald Browne\u2019s contribution \u201cSpeaking Up: A Brief History of Minority Languages and the Electronic Media Worldwide\u201d stands out in that it widens the scope and provides \u201cthe first history of minority language broadcasting, drawing on a wide range of examples from around the world\u201d (p. 13). This, however, has not been accomplished without difficulty. For example, regarding the Kurdish language, the author writes, \u201cIraq\u2019s national radio service initiated Kurdish language programming in 1939. In the ensuing years, other states with Kurdish minorities\u2014 Iran, Turkey and Syria\u2014followed suit, but such services often were discontinued and recommenced\u201d (p. 109, emphasis added). It is difficult to reconcile the emphasized portion of this assertion when we know that until 1991 Turkey imposed a strict ban on Kurdish.<\/p>\n

What might also be seen as a shortcoming is the virtual absence of audience research. Little is revealed as to how, when, to what extent, in what circumstances, and with what sorts of impact speakers of minority languages use their media. Having said that, it should also be clear that the editor, Mike Cormack, does acknowledge the importance of this, since, as part of his ecological research approach, he suggests several relevant questions that researchers should seek answers to through observing actual media use by audiences and interviewing them.<\/p>\n

Notwithstanding these minor shortcomings and a few typos (e.g., pp. 62, 63, 69), this book is a major contribution to the study of minority language media. Cormack\u2019s contributions \u201cIntroduction: Studying Minority Language Media\u201d and \u201cThe Media and Language Maintenance,\u201d as well as Hourigan\u2019s \u201cMinority Language Media Studies: Key Themes for Future Scholarship\u201d serve as solid and exceptional starting points for anyone interested in investigating minority language media. Cormack\u2019s introduction is devoted to a concise survey of previous studies of minority language media. His chapter builds on Einar Haugen\u2019s work to develop an \u201cecological approach\u201d to investigating this question: \u201cIn what ways can different media interact with other aspects of languages use to contribute, directly or indirectly, to language maintenance in specific communities\u201d (p. 62)? Hourigan expands this question by indentifying more areas for future scholarship in connection to minority language media. They further illustrate that \u201cminority language media studies can now be seen as an established field of study, one with its own research agenda, and one that is energized by the awareness of the fragility of the situations of many minority languages\u201d (p. 15). Many of those fragile languages belong to the 50% of languages in the world today that will likely die by the end of this century.<\/p>\n

Minority Language Media: Concepts, Critiques and Case Studies.<\/a>
\nEdited by Mike Cormack and Niamh Hourigan. Clevedon:
\nMultilingual Matters LTD. 2007. 274 pp. ISBN: 9781853599637.<\/em><\/p>\n

Book Review; Minority Language Media: Concepts, Critiques and Case Studies.
\nJaffer Sheyholislami, Carleton University, Dec 2009<\/em>
\nCanadian Journal of Communication, Vol 34 (2009) 757-767<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jaffer Sheyholislami, Carleton University, Dec 2009 Minority languages have been oppressed, denied, and neglected for a long time, and their decline is accelerating. Whereas estimates show [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":859,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-860","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kurdishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kurdishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kurdishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kurdishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kurdishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=860"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kurdishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/860\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2698,"href":"https:\/\/kurdishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/860\/revisions\/2698"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kurdishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kurdishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kurdishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kurdishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}