Chapter 3 – Access and Power in Language Learning
Majoritized and Minoritized Languages
Bibi Halima and Keli Yerian
Preview Questions
- What is the difference between majoritized and minoritized languages?
- Are majoritized languages always spoken by the majority of people?
- Are minoritized languages always spoken by a minority of people?
In modern linguistics, it is widely accepted that all human languages are equally sophisticated systems of communication. However, in many people’s subjective viewpoints some languages are more equal than others. Social attitudes establish hierarchies for languages and their speech communities that cannot be ignored when we are learning languages. For this reason, in the first section of this chapter we want to introduce some key terms that will help us discuss the role of power and access in language learning.
Majority and Minority Languages
Triggs (2021) defines a majority language as one used and spoken by most people in a population. For example, when you think of a language in the U.S., what do you think? It is probably English because it is widely used by the majority of people in the country.
On the other hand, the term minority language originally refers to language(s) used by relatively small populations. For example, American Sign Language (ASL) is used by Deaf/deaf and hard of hearing people in the United States. However, most scholars prefer the term minoritized for a minority language because it highlights the status of speakers. Lane et al. (2017) define speakers of minority languages as “linguistically marginalised social actors” who belong to non-dominant language communities (p. 8). For example, indigenous languages in the U.S. are the minoritized languages of minoritized communities.
Majority is Majori-tized and Minority is Minori-tized!
This is the tricky part that is important to understand – majority and minority languages are not inherently more or less important. It is through social and historical processes that they are made to be majoritized and minoritized, gradually and often strategically. In the case of majority languages, they are often declared to be the standard or official language in a specific context.
“Who declares this?”, you might ask.
The answer is simple. Groups with economic and political power have the ability to majoritize and standardize one language variety over others. The power could be the power of colonizers who used language as a tool to implement their expansion and control of new lands and peoples. For example, the hegemony of English in today’s world is strongly linked to the days of British colonization when colonized people’s speech and cultures in places such as present-day Pakistan, India, Kenya, and South Africa were devalued and suppressed through the imposition of English.
Decolonising the Mind, by universally acclaimed Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, highlights these issues of language and power. wa Thiong’o (1986) explains two important steps colon