Language and Minority Peoples in the Making of Modern Thailand泰國庶民和弱勢群體的草根式語言學習和語言使用

◎本研究報告以英文發表，並附上中文摘要，讓各界更能了解泰國弱勢族群的語言使用議題。
◎作者為聯合國組織及泰國國家發展院研究員，長期觀察國際發展與社會議題。
◎本書可作為聯合國2030年可持續性發展目標系列叢書。

本書中文書名為《泰國庶民和弱勢群體的草根式語言學習和語言使用》，內容以泰國基層社會老百姓，如孤兒院童、難民中心的難民、按摩店女郎、街頭工作的年輕人等為研究對象，探討這幾個不同弱勢群體的語言學習議題。
本書是全泰國到目前為止最具系統式的大曼谷地區弱勢群體的語言議題研究，報告顯示，學習外國語言對於邊緣化群體民眾十分重要，語言技能可以改善他們的經濟狀況，減少貧困。

Research, as reported in this book, addresses how does the language a person speaks, reads & writes affect one’s opportunity to hold what types of job, and be economically successful or unsuccessful in the context of Thailand, continental Southeast Asia/ASEAN? This book is interested in how foreign/second language education helps the marginalized groups (e.g., orphans with disabilities, asylum seekers, urban refugees) achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as defined by the United Nations.
This book stresses the need to let the marginalized groups (e.g., asylum seekers, urban refugees, orphans with and without disabilities, street workers, bargirls/love entrepreneurs) learn foreign/second languages (whether English, Chinese, Japanese and Thai). Foreign/second language skills are important for the socially excluded minority groups and individuals to better their situations, reduce poverty and further their pursuit of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

李育修

1978年年底生，台灣高雄鼓山左營人。美國印第安那大學（布魯民頓校區）博士，國立政治大學長榮桂冠講座系列演講人，長期任泰國國家發展院研究中心研究員，兼任聯合國亞太經社會（聯合國亞洲總部）組織發展和職員單位的顧問，先後執教和專題演講下列課程：定性研究方法、都市難民的語言溝通議題、聯合國長官學習中文的動機。近年來曾任倫敦社會研究中心、國立成功大學、國立清華大學、新加坡國立大學和新加坡南洋理工等研討會的與談人和場次主持人。

Hugo Yu-Hsiu Lee has been an award-winning researcher at the Indiana University Bloomington (USA) and the National Institute of Development Administration (Thailand), and Harvard University's member of e-courses (Harvard Kennedy School). He currently serves as one of the United Nations Consultants, United Nations Organizational Development & Staffing Unit (United Nations Headquarters, Asia / Bangkok duty station).

AS I AM writing and revising preface, the 74th session of United Nations, Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (held from 11 - 16 May 2018 at the United Nations Conference Center, Bangkok), is now in full swing to address the issue of inequality (Theme Topic: Inequality in the era of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development). Discussions about information and communication technology, environment, economics, financing, trade, investment, transport, energy are held among United Nations senior officials and ministerial representatives during the 74th Commission.
Nonetheless, inequality of opportunity to access basic education rights, services and resources such as suitable learning materials, pedagogy and teaching methods required for individuals and groups to communicate with foreign customers and trade partners from other countries is not addressed by the United Nations. The cost of ignoring inequality of opportunity to learn globally dominant, foreign and second languages is significant.
The book finds that inequality is on the rise in Thailand and unequal access to opportunities such as foreign and second language learning (particularly dominant-language learning opportunities) has left enormous marginalized individuals and groups behind, resulting in widen inequalities of outcomes, particularly in income.
The book also finds that to converse in a foreign/second language is closely associated with opportunity and power to increase income. This is particularly true for the urban poor and those who work in the service industry.
There is a growing recognition that strategic bi-/multilingualism in individual and group levels is good to boost economic growth. Research (as reported in the book) demonstrate that marginalized individuals and groups with high access rates to dominant, foreign, second language learning opportunities have lower poverty rates.
In other words, minority peoples who actively foster foreign/second language learning gain more rewards in their workforce.
Access to humanitarian-based language-support programs and informal foreign/second language learning resources is crucial for achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs) for different groups of minority peoples by helping reduce and combat poverty, increase employment opportunity and advance formal and informal education. In the last decade, language solutions to social problems have not yet become a central focus of research, development planning and implementation of plans by the United Nations and civil society leaders.
However, language solutions to social problems are essential to help realize United Nations’ SDGs. Micro language planning, precision language education, informal language learning, competent and strategic bi-/multilingualism, for instance, help reduce poverty (SDG1) and reduce inequality (SDG10), support the development of education (SDG4) and industry (SDG9), and ultimately boost economic growth (SDG8).

初版自序PREFACE
推薦序FOREWORD
緒論INTRODUCTION
PROLOGUE

◎第一部　導言
Part 1 Introduction

Chapter 1
Language-Support Programs To Help Achieve Sufficiency Economy & Sustainable Development in The Margins　
第一章
自給自足經濟、可持續發展、社會基層的非營利組織管理與雙語、多語之學習和使用的關聯性　

◎第二部 殘疾孤兒的英語學習
Part 2 Issues in English Education for Orphans with Disabilities

Chapter 2
The Promise of English to Reduce the Poverty for Orphans with Special Needs
第二章
從有特殊需要（殘疾）的孤兒來看學習英語對減少貧困的承諾　

◎第三部 服務業基層人士的語言議題
Part 3 Issues in Language Learning and Language Use for Service-Industry Workers

Chapter 3
Service Industry could be a Game-Changer for Language Learning: Another Challenge for Thai Masseuses, Restaurant Waiters and Waitress
第三章
按摩師、餐廳服務生的雙語、多語之學習和使用　


Chapter 4
Speaking like a Love Entrepreneur among Peasants’ Daughters　
第四章
從農夫的女兒變身成都市愛情企業家的語言轉換模式

Chapter 5
Bargirl Style of Language Use　
第五章
酒吧女郎風格的語言選擇　

◎第四部　尋求政治庇護者、都市難民的語言議題
Part 4 Issues in Language Education, Language Use (Communication) for Asylum Seekers and Urban Refugees

Chapter 6
Issues in Language Education for Urban Refugee Children and Youth
第六章
難民孩童的語言教育議題　

Chapter 7
Issues in Language and Communication faced among Urban Refugee Adults
第七章
成人難民的語言和溝通議題　

Concluding Remarks of The Book　
Epilogue: FUTURE FOCUS　
Appendices

本書目的 Purposes of This Book

This Book Calls for Minority peoples (in developing countries) are encouraged to use the power of dominant languages (particularly, English) as tools to build their futures

Language and Minority in the Making of Modern Thailand: Towards Development and Social Change is intended to provide a recent review of the past decade and a recent understanding about strategic bi-/multilingual language use among marginalized populations, labelled as minority peoples (e.g., orphans with disabilities, bargirls, asylum seekers and urban refugees), in Thailand’s capital, Bangkok City. The book aims to reveal inequality in access to acquire English and inequality in educational resources to obtain fluency of other dominant (foreign/second) languages, particularly with an emphasis on Chinese and Japanese, all of which are unequally distributed to the poor, marginalized and vulnerable groups (compared to the elite class who has almost exclusive access to English and other dominant languages to legitimize their status in the social hierarchy).
This book is also used as a databank on descriptions of language and poverty, language and minority peoples, language and economic growth, and language and development complied for the past decade (2010-2018) in Thailand.
Chronic low-income and long-term poverty in individual, family and national levels remain a constant issue to overcome. This book helps understand the mechanisms through which foreign/second (bi-/multilingual) language competence in the individual level affect one’s economic, social and sustainable developments. Understanding these above-mentioned mechanisms might have policy, research and practical implications for educational and social policy in national, regional and international levels.
Mainstream English and other dominant languages (e.g., Chinese) to overcome poverty and attain development for the marginalized and vulnerable groups in developing countries
This book invites readers to join an important debate in which economists, linguists and development agents are often at odds to the relationships between language, inequality, poverty, education, economy and development.

CHAPTER 1
Language-Support Programs To Help Achieve Sufficiency Economy & Sustainable Development in The Margins
第一章　
自給自足經濟、可持續發展、社會基層的非營利組織管理與雙語、多語之學習和使用的關聯性
 
A KEY CHALLENGE to nonprofit organizations and non-governmental groups (NGOs)today is to develop the economies and societies for minority peoples.Traditionally, nonprofits and NGOs have relied on humanitarian-based programs (for instance, medical services),but recently many of them have turned to foreign/second language-support programs and explored the possibility of offering the English language courses. In this light, the view that sufficiency economy is one of the prospects for change adopted by nonprofits and NGOs toward today’s minority peoples has long been uncontroversial.Yet, research into nonprofit management has historically and consistently failed to adopt a sufficiency economy perspective to fully understand the extent to which informal and private foreign/second language-support programs (provided by nonprofits and NGOs) play a crucial role in helping minority peoples achieve the sufficient economy goals. The present study (as reported in the chapter), which draws on data from the fieldwork of nonprofits and NGOs in Thailand, examines a form of private education – informal foreign/second language-support programs – that adopt the sufficiency economy approach.

GLOBALLY, MARGINALIZED GROUPS have not equally benefited from the mainstream (formal) foreign/second language education programs. Increasingly, inappropriate formal foreign/second language education is regarded as one of the key factors in the persistence of marginalization of minority peoples. Notwithstanding the documented progress in the mainstream applied linguistics of formal foreign language education over the past decades, there is little understanding of the extent to which a lack of appropriate informal foreign/second language learning affects minority people’s lives to achieve the sufficiency economy goals. Despite these aforementioned challenges and knowledge gaps, the study found that there have been a number of promising practices of sufficiency economy philosophy by nonprofit organizations and NGOs. Informal foreign/second language-support programs are adopted as a tool, thereby some programs have gone out of their way to help realizing sufficiency economy of minority peoples.

摘要

非營利組織和非政府組織（NGO）面臨的主要挑戰是如何促進社會底層弱勢民眾的經濟和社會發展。傳統上，非營利組織和非政府組織一直採行人道主義的方案（例如說醫療服務），但最近已轉向外語培訓項目,尤其是探討對一些社會基層弱勢民眾提供英語課程的可能性。自給自足經濟 (Sufficiency Economy) 的觀念是非營利組織和非政府組織對當今社會基層弱勢民眾採取變革前景之一的觀點， 這早已在學界不存在爭議。然而，研究非營利組織管理的學者在學術文獻上甚少使用自給自足經濟的視角來充分理解非正式外語教學之項目(Informal Language Education)： 由非營利組織和非政府組織所提供語言培訓項目(Language-Support Programs)，旨在幫助社會底層弱勢民眾實現自給自足經濟目標所需要發揮關鍵作用的雙語和多語能力。本章透過蒐集泰國非營利組織和非政府組織的實地調查數據，探討了一種非正規外語教育計劃,採用非正式語言教育形式，來達
成自給自足經濟方法。
學校裡面失敗的正規外語教育被認為是社會基層弱勢民眾持續邊緣化的關鍵因素之一。儘管過去幾十年研究正規外語教育的應用語言學界取得了不錯的進展，但此學術圈內的學者缺乏對非正規外語教育和其對社會基層弱勢民眾實現自給自足經濟目標的關聯性還不甚了解。本章報導透過非正規外語教育為一種工具，某些非營利組織和非政府組織已經為社會底層弱勢民眾達到了一些自足經濟目標的實踐。