Language oppression in Amami: Reports from teaching practices in 1944
Presenter(s)
Affiliation
Topic
Linguistic Attitudes and Ideology
Type
Papers
Abstract
The Amami, like other Ryukyuan languages, is listed by UNESCO as a language in danger of extinction, the number of speakers has declined, and intergenerational language transmission has ceased. As a result of the military invasion of Satsuma in the 17th century, the Amami Islands were separated from the Ryukyu Kingdom and colonized. They remain under the administration of Kagoshima Prefecture to this day. Although they share the same Ryukyuan language region, Amami has a different historical and social development from Okinawa. However, the Amami people, like their Okinawan counterparts, cite "dialect correction" in education as the main cause of the decline of the indigenous language "Shimaguchi", which was represented by "dialect penalty tags" until the 1970s. Stories about these practices are still passed down from generation to generation by those who experienced it. It has also had a strong impact on people's language attitudes. Many people still consider their "Shimaguchi" is worthless. The "standard" language teaching was carried out in the Amami Islands on the basis of the “Spoken Language Instruction Manual “（Hanashikotoba shidōsho）published in Kagoshima Prefecture in 1942, in accordance with the Elementary School Act (Kokumin-gakkō-rei). The teachers were almost all from Amami, without any direct experience of listening and speaking the "standard language". Being short of standard language skills themselves they resorted themselves to negative measures, that is, adopted the method of banning "dialects". This study discusses how "dialect correction", which in former studies consisted only of "narratives" from the perspective of pupils, was carried out in the field of education. My analysis is based on reports from 85 schools, which had been subject to a teaching practice survey conducted in 1944.
(Presentation in Japanese is available)
