Manegacha is one of Tibet’s approximately sixty minority languages and is spoken by several thousand Tibetans living in four villages on the northeast Tibetan Plateau. Fieldwork conducted in early 2016 has confirmed earlier anecdotal evidence that the Manegacha-speaking community is currently shifting to Tibetan. Although this shift is taking place in all four villages, it is particularly pronounced in one community, where the majority of families have ceased speaking Manegacha to their children. Why has this community ceased transmitting the language while others are, for the most part, continuing to maintain it? This presentation will examine this issue by drawing on interviews with Manegacha-speakers in which they expressed language ideologies about ethnicity, community, and appropriate language use. Members in all Manegacha-speaking communities expressed language ideologies that are both amenable and hostile towards continued intergenerational language transmission. Not only are supportive and non-supportive ideologies expressed in all communities, they are also often expressed concurrently by the same individuals. In light of these persistent contradictions, I argue that the crucial difference leading to language shift in some Manegacha-speaking communities is the existence of social mobilization; language shift occurs when a community mobilizes around ideologies that undermine the language, not simply when such ideologies are present in the community, or even when they are strongly held. I therefore argue that understanding social mobilization, and its capacity to translate ideology into policy, is crucial for understanding language maintenance and shift.

1. Tibetan to Tibetans, Chinese to Chinese,
and Our Language Amongst Ourselves
Ideology, Social Mobilization & Language Shift in Northeast Tibet
Language Practices & Language Policies
in Multilingual Contexts
University of Melbourne, 6-7 April 2017
Gerald Roche
ARC-DECRA Fellow
Asia Institute, University of Melbourne
g.roche@unimelb.edu.au

2. Outline
1. Manegacha & Language Shift in Tibet
2. Manegacha: Attitudes and Ideologies
3. Two Villages: Gomar and Tojia
4. Beyond Attitudes and Ideologies

3. 1. Manegacha & Language Shift in Tibet
• ~8,000 speakers; four villages; NE Tibetan Plateau
(Qinghai Province, China)
• Mongolic language
• Speakers: Tibetan, but…
• Multilingual context: Manegacha, Ngandehua,
‘Tibetan’, ‘Chinese’ – but ‘Tibetan’ dominant
• One of Tibet’s minority languages

4. 1. Manegacha & Language Shift in Tibet

6. • Survey of 200 households (language use and
transmission)
• Reported frequency of use is decreasing inter-
generationally
• Reported capacity to use is decreasing inter-
generationally
• ~30% of HHs are not transmitting Manegacha to
children
• 92.5% of HHs stated they either ‘wanted’ or
‘strongly wanted’ to maintain Manegacha
1. Manegacha & Language Shift in Tibet

7. • Revitalization paradox: “The paradoxical mismatch
between ideology and daily practices.” (Rindstedt
and Aronsson 2002:721)
• Kulick 1992; Dauenhauer and Dauenhauer 1998; King
2000; Boas 2009; Kroskrity 2009; Ó hlfearnáin 2013;
Simpson 2013; Dobrin 2014; Senayon 2016; Curdt-
Christiansen 2016. [references at end]
• Solution: prior ideological clarification (Fishman etc.)
• Why is clarification necessary? Cognitive dissonance
vs heteroglossia
1. Manegacha & Language Shift in Tibet

8. 2. Manegacha:
Language Attitudes & Ideologies
• Positive Attitudes
– Useful (for telling secrets)
– Easy/ comfortable to speak
– Ancestral/ traditional
• Negative Attitudes
– Gross (skyug brtsog)
– Lacking ‘value’ (jiazhi)
– Useless (does not allow social mobility)
– Restricted (spatially, also in terms of topic)

9. 2. Manegacha:
Language Attitudes & Ideologies
• Supportive Ideologies
– Manegacha speakers as high culture bearers
– ‘Authenticity’
– Outrage
• Unsupportive Ideologies
– Passive acquisition models (genetic & proximity fallacy)
– Lexical fallacy
– Subtractive models of language learning
– Un-writable
– Trivialization

10. • There are many contradictory attitudes and
ideologies amongst Manegacha speakers.
• But it isn’t clear how these contribute to
language shift.
2. Manegacha:
Language Attitudes & Ideologies

11. 3. Two Villages: Gomar & Tojia
• Gomar: >90% of HHs are transmitting
Manegacha
• Tojia: >90% of HHs are not transmitting
Manegacha
• Are there any differences between the two
communities in the expressed attitudes and
ideologies and the extent and nature of
contradiction therein?

12. • Attitudes in Gomar and Tojia appear equally
contradictory
• Gomar - ideologies of ‘authenticity’ were
commonly expressed; similar expressions
were all but absent in Tojia
• Tojia – valorization of the language as
patrimony was commonly expressed; similar
expressions all but absent in Gomar
3. Two Villages: Gomar & Tojia

13. • Ideological contradiction doesn’t seem to
contribute to shift and maintenance…
• The presence/ absence of certain attitudes
might be significant
• It might be useful to think of the ‘ideological
ecology’ of communities…
• …and to think about ‘keystone’ ideologies in
that ecology.
3. Two Villages: Gomar & Tojia

14. 4. Beyond Attitudes and Ideologies
• Attitudes and ideologies vis-à-vis other
factors…
• Yum skyid: physical setting
• Me: social mobilization

15. 4. Beyond Attitudes and Ideologies
• Tojia
– Leadership
– Resources (political, human, moral, material)
– Activities
• Gomar
– None of the above

16. Thanks! བཀའ་དྲིན་ཆེ།
References: goo.gl/Eym21n
May volume of IJSL is on Tibet