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Article published In:
Developments in Diglossic Settings in the Asian Pacific Region
Edited by Marinus van den Berg
[Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 30:1/2] 2020
► pp. 34–59
Special issue articles

A restudy of postcolonial Palau after two decades

Changing views on multilingualism in the Pacific

| The University of Tokyo

This paper reports results from a reinvestigation of multilingualism in postcolonial Palau, conducted twenty years after the first study. The first-ever ethnographic language survey conducted in 1997–1998 highlighted the diglossic nature of Palau where English replaced Japanese as the ‘high’ language, while indigenous Palauan remained as the ‘low’ spoken language. It indicated three possible future scenarios: (a) shift from multilingualism to bilingualism after the older Japanese-speaking generation passes away; (b) stability of diglossia with a clear social division between an English-speaking elite and a predominantly Palauan-speaking non-elite; (c) movement towards an English-speaking nation with Palauan being abandoned. The restudy conducted in 2017–2018 provides real-time evidence to assess the direction and progress of change, whilst the ethnographic analysis of recent changes in language policies and the linguistic analysis of teenagers’ narratives reveal the unpopularity of Palauan as a written language and the emergence of their own variety of English.

Keywords: diglossia, postcolonial English, postcolonial Japanese, language policy, real-time
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Sociohistorical background to Palau until its independence
  • Data and methodology
  • The 1997–1998 survey
  • The 2017–2018 survey
  • Changes in national and family language policies in Palau
  • The emergence of Palauan English?
  • Diglossia revisited
  • Apparent-time and real-time surveys
  • Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 30 June 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/japc.00044.mat
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