Multilingual Education
in South and Southeast Asia

Week 1 (Jan 10) : Language and Dialect

What is a language and what is a dialect, and how can we answer the question of how many of them are spoken in South/Southeast Asia? Problems with the definition of these terms. Instrumental and symbolic uses of language in the area. Handout
Readings:
1. Shapiro & Schiffman (S&S), Chap. 1-2.
   
   

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Week 2: (Jan. 17) Martin Luther King Day Holiday (Reschedule this for some time later?)

 

Week 3 and 4: (Jan 24) South Asian Languages: how many are there?

Applying the principles of Chap. 2 to the multilingual diversity of South Asia.



1. Readings: Shapiro & Schiffman, Chap. 3, sec. 3.0-3.1
   

2. Map: National Geographic Peoples of South Asia
   

3. Map of the Dravidian language area. and family tree diagram of South Dravidian languages.

4. Map of the Indo-Aryan language area.

5. Census of India page.

6. Schiffman 1998 (LCLP), Chap. 6, Language Policy in S. Asia.
   

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Week 4: (Jan. 31) Linguistic Diversity in Southeast Asia


1. Readings: Shapiro & Schiffman, Chap. 3, sec. 3.2-3.4
   
   
2. Maps: various ethnolinguistic groups.
   
   
3. Smalley Part 4

4. Handout: Language Variation in Space and Context.
   
   
5. Reading about diglossia as a sociolinguistic situation.

Garcia's article on typology of Multilingual education: Chart from Coulmas, p. 410

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Week 5: (Feb. 7) Problems of Register Formation.

Various people we've been reading mention Register problems as the biggest hindrance to changeover to various indigenous languages as a medium of instruction, especially at secondary and tertiary levels.
1. Examples of some English registers

2. Handout on Register and Repertoire

Week 6-7-8: Educational Models: types of bi- and multilingual schooling in the area.

History of education in South and Southeast Asia.



1. Readings: Shapiro & Schiffman Ch. 4

2. Handouts: Luxembourg situation

3. Review of Kubchandani's 1981 compendium.

4. Resume of Bh. Krishnamurti's Chaps 11 and 12

5. Resume of Bh. K's Chapter 13

6. Tickoo's Article on English in Asian Bilingual Education.
7. Mackey and other readings (on Blackboard, e.g. "Typology of Bi and Multilingual Education")
   
   

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Week 9: (March 4 to March 14)  SEMESTER BREAK

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Week 10: Other Sociolinguistic issues

Variables beyond ethnicity: the problems of: diglossia and the complexities introduced by Colonialism and of Pidgins and Creoles and their use in educational settings.

• Readings: Shapiro & Schiffman Chap. 5.3 ff.
  
  
• Schiffman, ``Diglossia as a Sociolinguistic Situation", in Coulmas (ed.) 1997. (see Other Readings )
  
  
• The Nagamese model. Review of Bhattacharya's 1994 article
  
  
  • Readings: Shapiro & Schiffman Chap. 7
    
  • Sridhar 1974; Bhattacharya 1994.
    
  • Handout on Pidgins and Creole languages .
  
  
  • Map of India and Indian languages.
  • Census of India page with Maps of Nagaland and adjacent territories.

• Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia: development of two national languages from one spoken (pidginized?) one.

  
  

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Weeks 11-14: The Singapore model

How does Singapore's multilingual system work, and what can we learn from it? Factors such as age, sex, education, religion, ethnicity, `race', caste (?), etc.


1. Resources:
   1. Map of Southeast Asia.

   2. Map of Singapore

   3. Map of Malaysia.

   4. On-line dictionary of Singapore English

   5. Gopinathan et al., Language, Education and Society in Singapore.

      • Chapter 2: Tan Su Hwi

      • Chapter 3: Anne Pakir

      • Chapter 5: Joyce James

      • Chapter 6: Anthea Gupta A Framework for the Analysis of Singapore English.
        • A note by Gupta on discourse particles.

        • Anthea Gupta's Singapore English resource page.

        • A recent (as yet unpublished) article by Anthea Gupta entitled Singlish on the Web.

      • Chap. 8, Vanithamani Saravanan, Tamil Language Maintenance in Singapore.

      • Chapter 14, Maha Sripathy, "Language Teaching Pedagogies and Cultural Scripts".

      • Kandiah, T. (in Foley, Kandiah et al. English in New Cultural Contexts.) ``The Emergence of New Englishes."

An article by yours truly on the question of language maintenance and language shift in Malaysia and Singapore.

Another article by yours truly on the problems of policy implementation especially for and by the Tamils, in Singapore.

And in case anybody was wondering, why I haven't mentioned the term linguistic ideology

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