1 Developing Minority Language Media Studies

The purpose of this paper is to argue that minority language media studies should be seen as a distinct area of study, overlapping with, but separate from both minority language studies more generally, and media studies. Seeing the field in this way will bring advantages to the study of minority language media which are lacking at present. However, before looking at these possibilities, I want to consider a preliminary question as to what the importance of media in this area might be. This question is prompted by Fishman’s scepticism concerning the role of the media in reversing language shift. In his original account of intergenerational language loss and the ways in which this might be reversed, the usefulness of the media is not only well behind the use of language in the home and community, but is also put behind such elements as education and the work sphere (Fishman 1991, p.395). In his more recent writing he has noted that the media are more likely to interfere with mother-tongue transmission than support it, simply because of the greater quantity of media output in the dominant, majority language (Fishman 2001, p.473). He has even referred critically to “the mass-media ‘fetish ’ of some minority language activists ” (Fishman 2001, p.482), notin