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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1192

Part of Session 127: Language outside of the city (Other abstracts in this session)

Centralising diversity or diversifying centres? Negotiation and standardisation of “mother tongue” minority languages in formal education in the Philippines

Authors: De Korne, Haley
Submitted by: De Korne, Haley (University of Pennsylvania, United States of America)

Official languages used in formal education are characterised by prescriptive standards based on centralised target varieties; minority languages often enjoy a greater freedom from prescriptive norms, as they are used in informal spaces, on the periphery of education and official language use.  This is the case in the Philippines, where the official languages, English and Tagalog/ Filipino, have written and spoken standards, while many of the 170 other languages are generally not standardised and are often referred to as ‘dialects’.  These traditionally marginalised languages are increasingly being incorporated into formal education through the implementation of “Mother tongue-based Multilingual Education”(MLE) policy and programming (RP DepEd 2009), resulting in new negotiated language norms and use.  This paper explores the tension between the push to standardise languages and the pull to preserve language diversity and cultural identity, as manifested in a MLE program in the southern Philippines.

While MLE policy is issued from the capitol, with further influences from the global humanitarian and academic communities, it is negotiated by the local schools and communities that attempt to put it in to practice (cf. Canagarajah, 2005).  Through discourse analysis of national policies and international reports that promote MLE in the Philippines, the language ideologies and goals emanating from the political centre are discussed.  In contrast, ways in which these ideologies and goals are contested and negotiated locally are explored through an ethnographic case study of the introduction of an Indigenous minority language in several rural primary schools in 2011, consisting of participant observation and interviews.  Differences in spoken dialect, orthographic preferences, identities, political borders and diverse educational goals among the language community all contribute to contestation of language use.  There do not appear to be easy solutions to the challenge of combining formal education practices with local language practices, and different ideologies are negotiated during the creation of learning materials, curriculum guides, and assessment measures.

The emergence of new language practices and norms is ongoing as education continues to shift from English and Filipino to local languages, and it is likely that conflict and negotiation will be on going as well.  MLE programs have the potential to increase the power of peripheral languages and speakers, but they also risk diminishing the power and diversity of local language practices through assimilation into mainstream practices and ideologies.  Further study of this community and others would help to better understand the swings of power between centralised prescriptive norms and the local will to manifest difference and diversity.

References:

Canagarajah, S. (2005). Reclaiming the Local in Language Policy and Practice. Lawrence Erlbaum.

Republic of the Philippines Department of Education (2009). DepEd Order 74: Institutionalizing Mother tongue-based Multilingual Education (MLE). Pasig City: DepEd.