Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis

This paper examines language policy options as they relate to post-colonial primary education in Creole-speaking multi-ethnic Caribbean states. It first discusses the different roles of English and vernacular languages, the former as the language of instruction in formal education and the latter as interactional languages within local communities. It concludes with theoretically based practical notes on language teaching appropriate to each policy option. This paper uses as an illustrative example the language policies in bi-ethnic Guyana and addresses the critical issue whether the Ministry of Education, through social aspects of its policies, should take responsibility for community languages or ignore community languages in order to focus on early proficiency in the English language. The controversial decision is to what extent primary education should emphasise high English inputs for early academic attainment or prioritise community language inputs for promotion of social equity. This paper considers three language policy options, one policy option matching each of these extremes and one addressing the middle ground. Each policy option is contingent on three decision criteria: density of entry languages, available resources and the extent to which communities value their languages. These policy options are: (i) English language immersion, (ii) Transitional language policy and (iii) Bilingual policy. The three policies options are illustrated with comparative examples from several pluri-ethnic states.

The paper develops the insights laid out in the chapter The Trauma of Nation’s De-localisation in the book Dramaturgy of National Identity (2005). In the contemporary world, delocalisation of nations is unavoidable and, in that sense, it represents a natural process of civilisation which reproduces national identity in a transnational form both in the country of emigration and of origin. However, for the nations with an incomplete story of territorial consolidation, the opening up to supra-nationalisation, emigration, and globalisation in general was unexpected and seemed infinite and destructive for the nation. The Lithuanian nation was affected by delocalisation, among other things, primarily by especially large-scale emigration. The nation is losing the feeling of integrity. Just 25 years ago, the ideal of the localisation of the nation – its concentration on a sovereign territory – prevailed. Global life economization, European supra-nationalization, and the failure to successfully complete the post-communist transformation dealt a blow to the national ideal that actualised “one’s own state”. The “breaking up” of the nation was so unexpected that even nationalism did not actualise ethnocentrism. It was expected to be just temporary costs of post-communist transformation. However, presently, we have increasingly more arguments to prove that the post-communist transitional period has expired, therefore, the current trends have long-term prospects. The de-localization of the Lithuanian nation takes place not really as a natural process of civilisation, but rather as a response to the mainly unsuccessful end of post-communism in Lithuania. The situation is to be characterised by the metaphor of trauma. Trauma is experienced at unexpected “discovery” of one’s own ethno-social disability (the term by R. Grigas) when one clings onto the traditional ethnocentric ideal of the nation and is unable to evaluate and project the delocalisation of the nation as a natural process of civilisation. The trauma implies the threat of a break in the building of national identity and the decline of the nation. For the Lithuaniannism to survive, it is necessary to “incorporate” a perspective of the network of its agents, open to transnationalism and stretching all over the world, into the content of the nation.

The article analyses the transformations of the European science of philology in relation to the strengthening of nationalism, as well as the reflection of the trend in the context of East Prussia and Prussian Lithuania. The developments in comparative philology presupposed researchers’ interest in the studies of Baltic languages, Lithuanian in particular. The establishment of the Department of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology at Königsberg University both formed the tradition of academic Baltic studies and united the efforts of the intellectuals of East Prussia for the preservation of linguistic and ethnic-cultural heritage of Prussian Lithuania. The text Aus Baltischen Ländern by lawyer and cultural worker Ludwig Passarge is a characteristic example featuring the reflection of the ethnic-cultural model of Prussian Lithuanians against the background of predomination of comparative linguistics typical of the intellectual context of Europe in the 19th c.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the growing concern over the treatment of multilingualism in the main cities of Lithuania (Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipėda) with the focus on the population’s national identity and self-consciousness identifying the prospects of preserving the language-related national identity. The main problem seems to be deciding on which language of instruction would be most beneficial to balanced communication. This is a task requiring thoughtful planning and is surrounded by debate. Somebody prefer instruction only in the official language, but some aim to foster linguistic and thus social diversity by encouraging teaching in several languages, emphatically amplifying the English.

The purpose of this article is to show the process by which Roma elite members actually construct political and cultural boundaries and at the same time propose a deterritorialised version of a Nation across state borders. As a result, the nation-building project and the process of ethnicisation promoted by Roma activists and members of the elite can be understood as a process of challenging borders and setting up boundaries. On the one hand, state borders may represent the barrier to surmount in order to accomplish an alliance based on a supposed ethnic category. On the other hand, the analysis of Roma identity and political strategies reveals the different forms of boundaries that may exist and how they may in fact be created and manipulated.