German in the Pacific: Language policy and language planning

Abstract

During the second half of the 19th century, extended regions of the South Pacific came to be part of the German colonial empire. The colonial administration included repeated and diverse efforts to implement German as the official language in several settings (administration, government, education) in the colonial areas. Due to unfamiliar sociological and linguistic conditions, to competition with English as a(nother) prestigious colonizer language, and to the short time-span of the German colonial rule, these efforts rendered only little language-related effect. Nevertheless, some linguistic traces remained, and these seem to reflect in what areas language implementation was organized most thoroughly. The study combines two directions of investigation: First, taking a historical approach, legal and otherwise official documents and information are considered in order to understand how the implementation process was planned and (intended to be) carried out. Second, from a linguistic perspective, documented lexical borrowings and other traces of linguistic contact are identified that can corroborate the historical findings by reflecting a greater effect of contact in such areas where the implementation of German was carried out most strictly. The goal of this paper is, firstly, to trace the political and missionary activities in language planning with regard to German in the colonial Pacific, rather similar to a modern language policy scenario when a new code of prestige or national unity is implemented. Secondly, these activities are evaluated in the face of the outcome that can be observed, in the historical practice as well as in long-term effects of language contact up until today.|| 1 This paper is based on a joint presentation by Stefan Engelberg (IDS Mannheim) and the author, held at the Seventh International Conference on Missionary Linguistics, University of Bremen (Germany), March 2012. Thanks go to Stefan Engelberg for preparing substantial parts of the presentation, especially regarding remuneration policies and the categorization of loanwords with respect to planning effects. Further thanks go to our student research assistent, Ineke Scholz, for categorizing the loanwords into semantic fields.

Historical sociolinguistics in colonial New Guinea: The Rhenish mission society in the Astrolabe Bay

“…This circular was mainly geared against the teaching of English (in the absence of German) by English-speaking mission societies in the German colonies (cf. Stolberg 2015). Note that the German colonial legislation applied to all so-called Schutzgebiete (protectorates) unless specified otherwise.…”

“…Repeated changes and readjustments in the German colonial language policy reflect this indecision (cf. Stolberg 2015).…”