Cover not available
Article published In:
Pragmatics
Vol. 25:4 (2015) ► pp.573–588

Writing right

Language standardization and entextualization

Literate Lahu, speakers of a Tibeto-Burman language in the ethnically and linguistically diverse uplands of Southeast Asia and southwest China, inscribe their language in an ecology of literacies shaped by the imbrication of a number of ideologies. As members of the larger category of chao khao or mountain people, the Lahu belong to a group which is persistently labeled as Other. (Laungaramsri 2001: 43-4). Lahu are also a people-without-writing (Pine 1999), despite the fact that at least three writing systems exist for Lahu, with a fourth in somewhat limited use and at least one other system in development. The ideological diversity of the entextualization of Lahu benefits seeing it within a particular historical and ecological context. This paper historicizes particular literacy practices within the context of the development of a particular form of written Lahu. It also traces the influence of a phenomenon termed "proprietary orthographies" which permeates the ecology of literacies in mainland Southeast Asia and, I argue, has a significant impact on Lahu language literacy practices. Focusing on a subtle issue of the representation of tone, and also drawing on self-reporting of literacy, as well as making use of Keane's concept of "semiotic ideologies", I argue that orthographies enjoy a complex form of indexicality in this region which differs in small, but important, ways from other areas.

Keywords: Language ideology, Entextualization, Lahu, Writing systems
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 1 December 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.25.4.05pin
References
Ahmad, Rizwan
(2011) Urdu in Devanagari: Shifting orthographic practices and Muslim identity in Delhi. Language in Society 40.3: 259-284. DOI logo  BoPGoogle Scholar
Anderson, Courtney
(1956) To the golden shore: The life of Admiram Judson. New York: Little, Brown and Company.Google Scholar
Balhorn, Mark
(1998) Paper representations of the non-standard voice. Visible Language 321: 56–74.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre
(1991) Language and Symbolic Power. G.R. a. M. Anderson, transl. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.  BoPGoogle Scholar
Bradley, David
(1979) Lahu Dialects. Canberra: Australian National University.Google Scholar
Brown, Becky
(1993) The social consequences of writing in Louisiana French. Language in Society 22.1: 67-101. DOI logo  BoPGoogle Scholar
Chafe, Wallace, and Deborah Tannen
(1987) The relation between written and spoken language. Annual Review of Anthropology 161: 383-407. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chamberlain, James R
(1991) The Ram Khamhaeng Controversy: Collected Papers. Bangkok, Thailand: The Siam Society.Google Scholar
Coulmas, Florian
(1989) The Writing Systems of the World. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Dickinson, Jennifer
this issue) Plastic letters: Alphabet mixing and ideologies of print in Ukrainian shop signs. Pragmatics 25.4: 517-534. DOI logo
Enwall, Joakim
(2001) Di- and trigraphia among the A-Hmao in Yunnan province, China. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 1501: 95-107.  BoPGoogle Scholar
Errington, Joseph
(2001) Colonial Linguistics. Annual Review of Anthropology 30.1: 19-39. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Feingold, David
(2000) The hell of good intentions: Some preliminary thoughts on opium in the political ecology of the trade in girls and women. In G. Evans, C. Hutton, and K.K. Eng (eds.), Where China Meets Southeast Asia: Social & Cultural Change in the Border Regions. New York: St. Martin's Press, pp. 183-221. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fennigson, Jenina
(1999) “A Broke-Up Mirror”: Representing Bajan in print. Cultural Anthropology 14.1: 61-87. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gal, Susan
(1991) Bartók's funeral: Representations of Europe in Hungarian political rhetoric. American Ethnologist 28.3: 442-458.Google Scholar
Gal, Susan, and Kathryn Woolard
(2001) Constructing languages and publics: Authority and representation. In S. Gal, and K. Woolard (eds.), Languages and publics: The making of authority. Manchester: St. Jerome Press, pp. 1-12.  BoPGoogle Scholar
Graff, Harvey J
(1987) The Labyrinths of Literacy: Reflections on Literacy Past and Present. London: The Falmer Press.Google Scholar
Harrell, Stevan
(1995) Cultural encounters on China's ethnic frontiers. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Heath, Shirley Brice
(1983) Ways With Words: Language, life and work in communities and classrooms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  BoP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hoffman-Dilloway, Erika
(2008) Metasemiotic regimentation in the standardization of Nepali Sign Language. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 18.2: 192-213. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hunter, Cleda Beatrice
(1946) The Contributions of J.H. Telford in the Christianizing of the Lahus of Burma, During the Period from 1924 to 1939. Master. Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary.Google Scholar
IWGIA
(2004) The Indigenous World-2004. International Working Group for Indigenous Affairs. Copenhagen.Google Scholar
Irvine, Judith T., and Susan Gal
(2000) Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In Paul V. Kroskrity (ed.), Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Polities, and Identities. Santa Fe, New Mexico: School of American Research Press, pp. 35-84.Google Scholar
Jaffe, Alexandra
(2009) Entextualization, mediazation and authentication: Orthographic choice in media transcripts. Text & Talk 29.5: 571-594. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jaffe, Alexandra, and Shana Walton
(2000) The voices people read: Orthography and the representation of non-standard speech. Journal of Sociolinguistics 4.4: 561-587. DOI logo  BoPGoogle Scholar
Jones, Delmos J
(1967) Cultural variation among six Lahu villages, Northern Thailand. Dissertation, Cornell University.Google Scholar
Keane, Webb
(2003) Semiotics and the social analysis of material things. Language and Communication 231: 409-425. DOI logo  BoPGoogle Scholar
Krairiksh, Piriya
(1991) Towards a revised history of Sukhothai art: A reassessment of the inscription of King Ram Khamhaeng. In J.R. Chamberlain (ed.), The Ram Khamhaeng Controversy: Collected Papers. Bangkok: The Siam Society, pp. 53-160.Google Scholar
Krammerer, Cornelia Ann
(1988) Territorial imperatives, Akha ethnic identity and Thailand’s national integration. In R. Rudieri, F. Pellizzi, and S. Tambiah (eds.), Ethnicities and Nations. Houston: University of Texas Press, pp. 277-291.Google Scholar
Levi-Strauss, Claude
(1992) Tristes Tropiques. J.a.D. Wrightman, transl. New York: Viking Penguin.Google Scholar
Maybin, Janet
(2007) Literacy under and over the desk: Oppositions and heterogeneity. Language and Education 21.6: 515-530. DOI logo  BoPGoogle Scholar
Moerman, Michael
(1968) Being Lue: Uses and abuses of ethnic identification. In J. Helm (ed.), Essays on the Problem of Tribe, Proceedings of the 1967 Annual Spring Meeting of the American Ethnological Society. Seattle: University of Washington Press, pp. 153-169.Google Scholar
Nishimoto, Yoichi
(1998) Northern Thai Christian Lahu narratives of inferiority: A study of social experience. Master of Arts. Chiang Mai University.Google Scholar
Pine, Judith M.S
(1999) Lahu writing/writing Lahu: Literacy and the possession of writing. In Globalization and the Asian Economic Crisis: Indigenous Responses, Coping Strategies, and Governance Reform in Southeast Asia. Vancouver, British Columbia: Institute of Asian Research, University of British Columbia, pp. 176-185.Google Scholar
(2008) Landscapes of literacy: The view from a Lahu village. In Prasit Leepreecha, Kwanchewan Buadaeng, and Don McCaskill (eds.), Integration, Marginalization and Resistance: Ethnic Minorities of the Greater Mekong Subregion. Chiangmai, Thailand: Silkworm Books.Google Scholar
Pinkaew, Laungramsri
(2001) Redefining Nature: Karen Ecological Knowledge and the Challenge to the Modern Conservation Paradigm. Thailand: Regional Center for Social Sciences and Sustainable Development: Chiang Mai.Google Scholar
Schieffelin, Bambi B., and Rachelle Charlier Doucet
(1994) The “real” Haitian Creole: Ideology, metalinguistics, and orthographic choice. American Ethnologist 21.1: 176-200. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Silverstein, Michael
(1976) Shifters, linguistic categories, and cultural description. In Keigh Basso, and Henry Selby (eds.), Meaning in Anthropology. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, pp. 11-55.  BoPGoogle Scholar
Smalley, William A
(1994) Linguistic Diversity and National Unity: Language Ecology in Thailand. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.  BoPGoogle Scholar
Smalley, William Allen, Chia Koua Vang, and Gnia Yee Yang
(1990) Mother of Writing: The Origin and Development of a Hmong Messianic Script. P.T. Mitt Moua, transl. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Sharp, Lauriston
(1965) Philadelphia among the Lahu. In J.R.H. Lucien, M. Hanks, and Lauriston Sharp (eds.), Ethnographic Notes on Northern Thailand. Vol. Data Paper: Number 58. Ithaca: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, pp. 84-96.Google Scholar
Street, Brian V
(1984) Literacy in Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
(1993) Cross-cultural approaches to the study of literacy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
(2003) What’s ‘new’ in New Literary Studies?: Critical approaches in theory and practice. Current Issues in Camparative Education 5.2: 77-91.Google Scholar
Tapp, Nicholas
(1989) The impact of missionary Christianity upon marginalized ethnic minorities: The case of the Hmong. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies XX1.11: 70-95. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
UNESCO
(1984) Literacy Situation in Asia and the Pacific. Country Studies: Thailand. Bangkok: UNESCO.Google Scholar
Walker, Anthony R
(2003) Merit and the Millenium: Routine and Crisis in the Ritual Lives of the Lahu People. New Delhi: Hindustan Publishing Corporation.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 4 other publications

Wendy Ayres-Bennett & John Bellamy
2021. The Cambridge Handbook of Language Standardization, DOI logo
Dickinson, Jennifer A.
2022. Plastic letters. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) ► pp. 517 ff. DOI logo
Jonsson, Hjorleifur
2020. Good attachment in the Asian highlands: questioning notions of “loose women” and “autonomous communities”. Critical Asian Studies 52:3 ► pp. 403 ff. DOI logo
Romero, Sergio
2021. When Ethnic Boundaries and Language Boundaries Mismatch. In The Cambridge Handbook of Language Standardization, ► pp. 621 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 13 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.