How to explain language conflict to middle school students?

[Machjo]

Through my experiences in English Canada, Quebec, 'Han' China and Xinjiang, I've come across language conflict on a number of occasions, as well as having often read about it. Some examples involve a woman driver in BC with a Quebec license plate receiving a gob of spit in the face and being called a f***ing separatist, Quebecois refusing to speak English in Quebec, English Quebecers refusing to speak French in Quebec, being told in my face by an adult English speaker in BC that he doesn't like French people (I was 12 at the time), having to interpret a heated discussion in Montreal between anglophones and francophones about the need for interpretation itself, offending a Uighur woman in Urumqi sinse I spoke to her in 'Hanyu' rather than Uigur, Uighurs in Shanghai who'd rather speak to han in English when they can, and foreigners in China refusing to speak to the locals in English except as a last resort, Chinese who refuse to learn Japanese, etc. etc.etc.

I'd never had to explain this stuff to my students before, however, until when recently a student of mine had encountered language conflict herself and then brought up the question in the classroom.

I wasn't sure if I should take the personal approach as above, or take the political approach (such as the US Official English Movement and 'hispanization', language conflict in the Sudan and the Balkans, India, the EU, the UN, Quebec sovereignty, etc.) Finally I decided to keep it on a personal level and just use the example of the Chinese who might refuse to learn japanese for historical reasons, and so some might refuse to speak English for similar reasons (either history, the menace of the English language to their own, political motives, ethnic conflict, or many others). I must admit, however, that, despite my own personal experiences with language conflict in my life (after all, I'm trilingual myself and have lived in or travelled to a few linguistic regions myself) I'd never expected to hear it from my students. And so didn't really know how to respond.

How would you respond to a middleschool student who should have come face to face with language conflict for the first time and asks you about it in class? Some of the students in class had never even conceived their could be any language conflict in the world axcept with chinese not wanting to learn Japanese, and were quite shocked to learn that it's a worldwide phenomenon which can certainly led to group conflicts as well.

I certainly want to be prepared next time a student should ever bring such a topic up again (once bitten, twice shy), so I'd appreciate any advice on your part.

Thanks

[LarryLatham]

What's to explain? How can you, or why should you, explain human nature. Likes or dislikes for particular languages appears to be part of life for some people, maybe less so for others, depending on where they live, and how often they encounter speakers of other languages. There are people who may have clear (to themselves) reasons for not wanting to learn or use a particular language--the Chinese speakers refusing Japanese, for example. But there are plenty of Chinese people who find Japanese quite a satisfactory language too, and like the Japanese culture as well. Not only that, but some people are wonderful...others are jerks. Is there a need to explain that to a teenybopper?

But I'm sure your student was upset. Maybe she just needed a little comforting...a little reassurance that even if she encountered a jerk, most people aren't like that.

Larry Latham