Language policy in Oceania: in the frontiers of colonization and globalization

Abstract

In this article, we present an overview of the language policies adopted in the Oceanian countries and territories after analysis of legislation, plans and government programs. Representing 22.9% of all languages in the world — the vast majority spoken by few people and endangered —, this continent suffered an intense linguistic colonization marked by the instrumentalisation of indigenous languages by missionaries and by the subsequent imposition of European languages as the only ones allowed during European and American imperialism. Such a scenario has broadened the complex linguistic situation in Oceania and has imposed on the countries of the region many challenges about languages to adopt after their independences, in view of the many local problems, which caused the Oceanian peoples to seek diverse political solutions and to become frontier peoples — frontiers of languages, frontiers of meanings, frontiers of memories, frontiers between colonizer languages, indigenous languages and immigrant languages.