Vernacular Literacy: A Re-evaluationClarendon Press, 1997 - 367 pages Illiteracy problems are worldwide, and growing. Political and economic factors are often in conflict over which language to use for basic education and how it should be taught. There is increasing pressure on the resources available for using literacy in coping with the rapid population increase, the spread of disease, and poor development. The editors and contributors to this volume are members of The International Group for the Study of Language Standardization and the Vernacularization of Literacy (IGLSVL), with unrivalled direct personal experience of literacy and language problems in the second half of the twentieth century. The contributors take the UNESCO publication, The Use of Vernacular Languages in Education, as their starting point. Published in 1953, this work was optimistic about the future of literacy. The contributors assess the nature and significance of the events that have taken place since then, providing a global overview. The discussions are supported by case-studies of campaigns to promote vernacular languages and examples of how people relate to their languages in different cultures. Most importantly, they question traditional notions of, and provide a non-Western perspective on, the uses and value of literacy. |
Contents
Political Economic Social | 16 |
Political and Economic Aspects of Vernacular Literacy | 23 |
Social Contexts Conducive to the Vernacularization of Literacy | 82 |
Problems and Solutions | 93 |
Pedagogical Aspects of Vernacular Literacy | 113 |
Jeannine Gerbault | 142 |
PART TWO Cases from Migrant Settings in Europe East Central | 187 |
Literacy in a Pidgin Vernacular | 222 |
Standard and Vernacular Literacy | 271 |
Conclusion | 316 |
List of Contributors | 332 |
| 338 | |
| 359 | |
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Common terms and phrases
Abstracts 1990 adult literacy Africa Arabic areas Bahasa Malaysia Basque Basque language bilingual Bislama Cameroon Cantonese cent century Chapter characters China Chinese colonial context contrast countries Creole cultural diacritics dialect digraphs economic élite English eracy ethnic European example factors France French functional groups guage Hausa Hong Kong Igbo illiteracy illiterate immigrants important Indian Kenya lack learners learning letters linguistic literacy campaigns literacy programmes literate logograms Malay Mandarin materials medium Melanesia migrants minority missionaries mother tongue motivation national language Nigeria official language oral orthography pedagogical phonemes Pidgin political population primary problems radio read and write region Roman alphabet rural Sango schools script semi-syllabic Singapore social society Spanish speak speakers spoken standard Swahili Tamil Tanzania taught teachers teaching tion tone traditional Unesco University University of York Vanuatu variety vernacular language vernacular literacy vowel Wolof women writing systems written language
References to this book
Proceedings 1999 Symposium on Document Image Understanding Technology David Doermann Limited preview - 1999 |