How public stamp rallies change even the youngest generations' attitude towards their heritage culture: Insights from rallies held in Ishigaki, Japan with clues in the Yaeyaman language and orientation system.
Presenter(s)
Affiliation
Topic
Decolonization and Globalization
Type
Papers
Abstract
Over one and a half centuries have passed since monolingual Japanese language policy was introduced into the Ryukyus, eventually culminating in all six indigenous languages of the Ryukyuan archipelago now facing extinction (Anderson 2019). This has sparked a movement of language revitalization, but one of limited success that still struggles to decolonize, including dealing with the low-status of the languages and their concepts (Brenzinger 2006) in the minds of these islanders raised psychologically addicted to being Japanese (Hammine 2021). This devalued attitude towards their own heritage creates many obstacles including language accommodation to the Japanese as well as a strong hesitation to call their words languages and embrace the more activist behavior critical for the survival of the language.
All remaining varieties of Yaeyaman contain a pronounced house-bound strategy for spatial descriptions, also known as Frames of Reference (Levinson 2003), that until now had escaped discovery or publication by many linguists due to over-reliance on elicitation and a focus on descriptive features of the language. While documenting this orientation system, it became apparent that simply documenting ethnolinguistic systems wasn't having a big enough of an impact. I needed to find a way to be more of an activist for the people.
This presentation will describe the orientation system briefly before explaining how the public stamp rallies have been conducted using clues in the language and with the house-bound spatial terms. Finally, survey results from those in the revitalization movement and roughly 300 members of the public who participated in the public rallies held March 29th, 2025, and August 12th, 2024 will be presented. I show how events focused on unique ethnolinguistic features of a language can help the community decolonize and offer researchers another tool to engage in activism for their speakers.
