Paste yoThroughout history, Aden as the second biggest city in Yemen has been known as a city of tolerance because of its composition of many different races and religions. Mosques were built next to Churches and Temples, solidifying Aden as an attractive place where different cultures and dogmas could coexist. Thus, despite this diversity, each ethnic community enjoys the absolute autonomy to subsist without any racial and social persecution. A specific group, Indian immigrants, whose their culture and language in Aden still permeates today and they represent a living example of that freedom in Aden.
In their paper " Language Maintenance Among the Indians of Yemen" Bader S. Dweik and Mohammed Y .Nofel ( 2014) draw attention to the freedom that the ethnic groups have in using the language in Yemen .In their article, they make profound fundamental study of what reasons assist Indians to maintain their language in Yemen .A detailed evaluation on the article will be presented in this paper to show the article's strong points side by side with its weak ones as well as providing description, analysis and interpretation that allow readers of the present paper to assess the article's value
Historical background :
In 1839, Aden became part of the British Empire and was administered by the Bombay Presidency to guard the southern entrance to the Red Sea. A large number of Indian nationals, including Hindus, Muslims and Parsis, had lived in Aden since mid-1880s. Although that the Aden administration was separated from India in April 1937and the British finally withdrew from Aden in 1967, a large number belonging to the Bohra, Khoja and Kachchi communities decided to remain behind and gradually became Yemeni citizens. An estimated 100,000 people of Indian origin are concentrated in southern part around Aden at that time. Nowadays, the Indians whose their number was estimated around 14000 in 2010 enjoy a fair degree of religious and cultural freedom as the Yemenis by seeing that the Indian Association in Aden manages to maintain their language and culture traditions .
Synopsis of the article
The article focuses on Language Maintenance among the Indian community in Aden-Yemen. It was clearly the first Arabic study which investigates what are the reasons that helped the Indian minority group in Yemen to maintain their language .A theoretical structure related to Fishman (1989) and Sridhar (1992) is the base of this present case .Three questions were stated by the authors to obtain the aims of this study starting from asking about the language background of the Indians of Yemen and to the imposing the question about influence of surrounding factors on Indian language maintenance. Not forgetting a question about the Indians background related to their proficiency in Arabic. Relying on Mix-method data obtained by a series of in-depth interviews and language questionnaire was distributed to representatives of Indian ethnic group , the authors try to answer the research questions. The concept of mixing different methods originated in 1959 when Campbell and Fisk used multi-methods to study validity of psychological traits (Creswell 2009) .The findings showed that the Indian community in Aden is a multilingual community and the Indian ethnic languages are still alive and although they are highly proficient in Arabic rather than their own language they keep on using their language. Related to the factors, results showed that attitudinal, cultural ,social and political factors have helped to preserve the language .
The Article Review:
Beneficially, there are various aspects to discuss and comment on, regarding to this study of these two writers which has led to both agreement and disagreement of personal stance, supported with reasons, facts, evidences, and examples if necessary. In the following paragraphs, the responses and comments will be made accordingly, one by one, based on the article from the beginning which is title of the article until the end of its part which is the conclusion.
Before reading this article, my understanding of this title was satisfactory due to being an Arabic person who has shallow previous knowledge of such matter. The title is obvious and it reflects what the article is about. From its real context that there will be some discussion related to language maintenance . To be more specific, "among Indians of Yemen" phrase made me understood the broader area about the article's concern such as the ethnic group and the country. In my own experience, I have found that the title of this article is quite common to Arabs more than non-Arabs . In addition, the title of this article and the content inside is related to each other where there is further explanation of the topic which I assume that it is not a misleading title.
What new to me is the real existence of some specific facts about Indians themselves and their way of living in Yemen (e.g. majority of them are Yemenis ,they are treated as real citizens there) . On the other hand, this article makes me think critically about the existence of the Arabic language among the Indians. In other words ,as real citizens what is their impression about the language of their second country and what is the sociolinguistic scale of their impression .
The abstract provides a very concise overview or we can say a summary of the research, reading through the abstract makes me understand what was done and why, the methods used , and the key results. It identifies the research problem. One point I have noticed is when anyone read the abstract he/she thinks that the article is one method research because the writers have neglected to mention qualitative method . There is only an indication for quantitative method by providing information about the questionnaire. From personal perspective, one reason for finding this as disadvantage in the abstract is that not all readers are the same , some people skim titles to find out what information is available on a subject and some may read only titles and abstracts. While others want to go deeper by looking at the tables and figures in the results, and so on. Therefore, a good article is the one which helps to insure that at whatever level a person reads the paper he/she likely gets the key information .
Regarding the organization of the article ,it could be considered an easy to follow and detailed article. The authors organized their article with the traditional way of organizing where all the sub-headings are there as the introduction ,statement of problem , objectives of the study ,questions of the study ,hypotheses of the study ,significance of the study, limitations of the study and so on. It is good to mention that the majority of the Arabic authors follow such format which in their personal perspective provides the best outline the reader needs to understand the piece. Nonetheless, This format may seem confusing to some readers due to its rigid structure but this is one way from many different ways are used .
The introduction clearly states the aim of the research and gives a meticulous rationale for this issue and how it started. The authors stated that there are many potential causes of the first immigration of Indians to Yemen .The political causes are considered to be the essential causes of the Indian immigration to Aden, especially from 1849 onwards (Abdullah 2008) whereas Amshoush (2003) indicated that some Muslim Indians passed through Aden while they were on their way to Mecca to perform religious duties.
Apart from that, there are detailed and easy to understand six parts in the introduction ,they are in order 'statement of the problem , the questions ,the hypotheses ,the objectives, the significance, limitations of the study.This comprehensive arrangement answer many questions I have stated before reading the introduction (e.g. what are the research questions? why do the authors select this study?In terms of shaping the objectives, questions, and hypotheses).
This introduction which enables the readers to see the picture more clearly differ from others I have read and seen where the writers emphasize only on purposes as similar to research objectives and assume that readers will be able to come out with their own research questions by reading only on research objective . This is fine for the readers who used to with the variety of studies done by different researchers but for those who are not used to, they will find it difficult to identify what is or what are the intended research questions. Based on what is stated by O’Leary, research hinges on a good question. A good idea and a good interest is not enough. ‘Without the articulation of a good question, we are travelling blind’ (2010).
The literature review provides a background to the study by examining and evaluating other research in the area. Clearly ,this study follow the footsteps of many researchers as the arguments for the Maintenance of Minority Languages have been made by many linguists around the world (Clyne, 1982, 1991; Fishman, 1977, 1996; Skutnabb-Kangas, 1981) .The literature review is organized clearly but as it is always innovated and renovated to meet the modern demand of this changing world, the chosen discussion of the issue of language maintenance must be modern too in which the year 2013. Unfortunately, the following examples show that the authors depended in their study on old studies and research (Fishman (1966), Sridhar (1985) , Dweik (1992), Holmes et al. (1993) ,Downes (1998) ,Spolsky (1998) , Dweik (2000), Al-Khatib (2001) ,Clyne (2001) ,Hatoss & Sheely (2009).
However, a reader can feel that the authors carried out a good effort to avoid any gaps in the topics of the literature reviewed .In this section, the researchers propose to analysis some theoretical and empirical literature which has direct influence on the outcome of languages in contact and to see if the findings of this study have any suggestions for future research. However, There is no explanation for the absence of any literature after 2009. It would have been useful to know why the authors did not use more recent research.
Next aspect that will be responded on is method used in the studied article .it presents concisely the way in which the research was carried out .The researchers used the 'social network' model proposed by Milroy and Milroy (1978) and they even explained more small details ('e.g. two assistants who belonged to the community helped the researchers to distribute and collect the language questionnaire. They distributed the questionnaire among their friends). The data were also obtained from pilot questionnaire which included twenty-two open-ended questions. The questions covered different aspects of the historical and social background of the Indian community such as the languages they speak, the regional origins their ancestors came from, causes and patterns of immigration ,and so on.
Unfortunately, I can see some points of discussion here as weakness signs in methodology section. First, a detailed explanation on one method over the other. The researchers provide a very detailed explanation of quantitative method which cannot be seen for qualitative method. Second , if we think of some questions like Why a combined method research was chosen? or Why was one method used more than another? Are details of data collection deeply described and justified? Are any ethical considerations described and explained?. No specific or satisfied answers could be provided .Evidence should be used to support the choice of methodology. Third ,the number of participants, the writers do not cite, provide evidence, or explain to the readers where they get the number of 100 respondents from or Why were 12 people interviewed, not more or fewer? Hence, this creates questions for readers to ponder whether the chosen number of chosen students is too little or too many, is it valid or reliable or not, and etc . Based on personal experience from Research Methodology ,when to learn “how to get the number of sampleâ€, according to Wunsch (1986) “two of the most regular flaws can be seen in research papers (1) disregard for sampling error when determining sample size, and (2) disregard for response and non response bias to several sources.Also Wunsch stated that, for a population of 1,679, the required sample size is 118.Based on this if we try to do similar arithmetic operation for the approximant total number of Indians in Aden 14000, e.g. a sample of more than 100 is needed to make estimation with a sampling error of ± 5 percent at 95 percent confidence level.''. Despite all that, in social research elaborated by Alasuutari, Bickman, & Brannen, there is a difficulty in finding sampling frames which are lists of population. This is because these frames are often not available. Consequently, it is common sense that the majority of studies on particular segments of the population cannot make use of population lists, consider study on the unemployed (2008).
Basically and with all the aforementioned points, the method section explained the important details and the procedure is described in sufficient detail that they can be repeated by others .I think the research could be replicated by someone else especially Arabs. Also the authors claim that the instruments are valid as a panel of six professional jurors who are experts in the field of sociolinguistics was requested to comment on the suitability of the form and content of the questionnaire. They recommended different modifications that made the questionnaire items clearer and more informative. For example, one of the professors suggested deleting few items and adding others. What I do not understand is on what linguistic bases the authors define the validity of the questionnaire where they did not point out the linguistic level of the participants before they take the questionnaire . It might have been helpful to provide more details of that to make the description more trustable.
However, the merit goes to the findings of this article, results section is excellent because it covers overall of the elements which proposed by the writers in their purposes. Results include a concise verbal description of the outcomes as well as tables and figures, showing statistical results. Furthermore , the findings are clearly presented through four tables as a try to solve all the study's questions .I cannot imagine the findings section to be better than what it really is .
In another important section, The discussion consistently relates the key findings to research discussed earlier. This part includes an evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of the findings, as well as of their general significance to further researchers and the general field. Advantageously, Dweik & Nofal referred back to points made in the literature review, both about previous research, and the research results presented.
As early mentioned, there are four tables to show results and what makes this result more valid is it is identical to Holmes et al. (1993) and Dweik & Kittaneh (2011). It is also comparable to the findings of Clyne (2001) who pointed out that “grandparents rather than parents play an increasing role in the intergenerational language maintenance.â€(p.367) . In addition, the results showed that political factors enhanced the use of the Indian ethnic languages among the Indians of Yemen. In my opinion, What makes the discussion more strong is the rational comparison the authors made between their results and the previous results .They compared existing conclusions with theirs. (e.g. if any outcomes are the same or similar or they are different ones) .
Dweik and Nofal provided some explanation for the obtained results which help me as reader needs some assurance that their program did not have serious contradictions with reality .On the other hand ,it would have been useful to know why they chose that specific number of the thorough tables because many linguists and readers think too many diagrams may show that you are lost yourself in replication rather than showing really important information. A reasonable and simple justification would have been excellent to convince those readers .
As we reached the end of the article an important aspect come through, conclusion where all the viewpoints are effectively re-emphasized. In this article, the conclusion was organized in five points which summarizing the whole thing. Although the conclusion summed up what was most useful and interesting about the research, I cannot see the personal opinion of the authors about the study .This sample seems fairly small in viewing what could be in any reader's mind .(e.g. What are the drawbacks of the study ?Do they think it was a successful research on all levels? Or Have they faced some difficulties?.
The recommendations are presented using short paragraph .The authors recommended for future research on Indians in other parts of Yemen , in the Arabian Peninsula, Asia as well as other parts of the world and on other ethnic groups such as the Persians, the Somalis and the Jews of Yemen. The researchers in a try to make their research more valuable ,they also recommended conducting comparative studies on large aboriginal ethnic languages .
Overall, besides all the preceding profound evaluation to the presented article, some points impose themselves in this paper self-evidently.Despite the article's title and its overall content, the words choice used in this article are easy to understand. The researchers tend to write in a simple way, without complicated sentence given, straight forward, and rarely use of sophisticated vocabulary. Despite, some redundant words do occur in the article such as “due to â€, “the study†and so on. In the one hand, as for the language terminologies in the article, there are not keywords identified by the writers after the abstract . On the other hand, there are some key terms that improper defined, not defined, and proper defined by them and this may lead to ineffective paper. According to what is stated in manual of European Integration Office (2011), it is important to define key terms or terms of reference clearly, because it is a written document presenting the purpose and the scope of the terms provided. The term “language maintenance †is defined indirectly in the beginning of the literature review .It would have been perfect if we have seen a clear definition ,for example, according to A. Davies and. C. Elder (2005) The term "Language Maintenance" is used to describe a situation in which a speaker, a group of speakers, or a speech community continue to use their language in some or all spheres of life despite competition with the dominant or majority language to become the main/sole language in these spheres''.
Furthermore, the years of references they chose are not relevant to the contemporary field of the issue. Most of their references are old ,for example : (Elkholy, Ali. (1966 ) , Fishman, Joshua. (1989). Weinreich, Uriel. (1974) ,however, there are two recent references which belong to one of the authors (Dweik, Bader. (2000). Dweik, Bader. and D., Kittaneh. (2011). Nonetheless, the references are to great extent related to the title and its key terms. The authors’ target audience is hardly to be recognized exactly. Even though their simple,the shortcomings in defining the basic terms of the study and the detailed presentation of the study give an impression that the authors presuppose well academic knowledge of method, terms and the issue from the reader.
From the reading, it can be implied that, the writers are trying to support on to persuade readers to agree with some ideas which show that without the positive atmosphere the Indian community enjoys in Yemen ,the language would not be able to survive .The authors supported this discussion by saying '' The democratic climate in Yemen has also helped the Indian community maintain their languages and the Yemenite government and its educational policies have allowed minority groups to use and learn their languages freely without restrictions. Also, the brotherly relations among the people of Yemen from all roots . A respected initiative and a hidden massage to all the communities in following the footsteps of the Yemeni community in embracing the minority groups not by obliterate their true identities but by pushing them forward to be the real them .According to Thomas and Collier (2002) also strongly advised educators that they must provide a socioculturally supportive school environment for language minority students that allows natural language, academic, and cognitive development to flourish in both L1 and L2.
Conclusion
To sum up ,there is no magic formula for guaranteeing language maintenance ,however, there are some factors help to reserve any language. S. Dweik and M .Nofel were privileged to assist in that field by gathering sociolinguistic information about Language maintenance .In their article " Language Maintenance Among the Indians of Yemen" ,social and cultural ,linguistic and attitudinal as well as political and demographic factors found as the contributors in Language maintenance among Indians in Yemen.
Overall, personally I like this paper and appreciate the hard effort done to demonstrate that the work really adds value to the research on such topic . However ,many strong points and weak one were situated under discussion in this paper .In the one hand ,the technical novelty of this paper seems limited and the detailed comments for the authors are not provided . Also, Some discussions are not very precise and the paper lacks key concepts definitions .On the other hand , I feel the paper thoroughly and consistently compares the presented research with the previous ones and it is good at demonstrating the distinct differences of. The presentation of the paper is excellent due to the frequent and clear use of figures as well as the paper is well written and structured.
ur essay in here…