Philosophical and practical issues in the conservation initiatives of 'peripheralized' Philippine languages

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2009-03-14
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Agcaoili, Aurelio
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Agcaoili, Aurelio
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The paper documents and critiques the initiatives of advocates of many ‘minoritized’ and ‘peripheralized’ Philippines languages to revitalize and conserve them and draw up from these initiatives theoretical and practical issues that must be addressed by these advocacy groups and by social institutions mandated to produce and reproduce what could be deemed as a just and fair because equity-based ‘national’ and ‘nationalized’ culture in the Philippines. The initiatives of advocates of ‘Other because othered’ Philippine languages have a history that dates back to the imposition from the center of a counter-productive conception of ‘nation’ and ‘nationalism’ from the center that prescribed—and continues to prescribe—a ‘national language’ from the center at the expense of the other languages and without regard for the rich diversity of these languages of the country. The public perception of a systematic because nationwide internal colonization by way of ‘Tagalogization’ of the public sphere that includes the wiping up of other indigenous and community languages in basic education and in national discourse grounds these advocacy efforts to contest the Tagalogization of all peoples of the Philippines and to actively negotiate a space for a new conception of nation and nationalism framed by the virtues of cultural and linguistic pluralism. The theoretical and practical problems of revitalization and conservation of minoritized and peripheralized Philippine languages results as well from the two-pronged means and methods to the systemic and systematic marginalization of these languages because of the privileging and entitlement accorded to Tagalog and English. The privileging and entitlement cut across the political, the economic, and the cultural. With the continuing migration of Filipinos everywhere including the United States, these problems are being brought over and reproduced in and among the diasporic and exilic communities of Filipinos. This is the reason why there is the need to revisit initiatives, in the Philippines and in the United States, to re-conceptualize policy and pedagogical approaches to heritage language teaching particularly in communities where there is a heavy influx of immigrant Filipinos from various ethnolinguistic groups in the Philippines. The discussion and analysis is framed by the urgency of fundamental respect for cultural democracy and linguistic rights.
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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported
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