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Reprieve
for
Neil Birrell
The question of whether there ever was one language from which all
others came has fascinated people from the occultists, with their quest for the
Ur-Sprache, which preceded the collapse of Nimrod's
ziggurat, up to today's researchers into generative grammar - much influenced
by the widely accepted theories of Noam Chomsky. In different ways their quests
all echo George Steiner's question when he asks:
"Why does homo sapiens, whose digestive tract has evolved
and functions in precisely the same complicated ways the world over, whose
biochemical fabric and genetic potential are, orthodox science assures us,
essentially common, the delicate runnels of whose cortex are wholly akin in all
peoples and at every stage of social evolution - why does this unified, though
individually unique mammalian species not use one common language?"
The problem is indeed acute. On the islands of New Guinea, where some 50
languages of the Papuan family are spoken in an area about the size of Wales, a
couple of villagers separated by a well eroded hill may, if they meet, find
that they are speaking two mutually incomprehensible morphologically unrelated
languages. The punishment of
Karl Young has pointed out to me that simply "The
Valley of Mexico with Mexico City as cultural if not geographical centre, (by
Valley is meant an area of drainage larger than some European and central
American states) was home to literally hundreds of indigenous languages most of
them not related in any way to the Mayan family and often not to each
other."
Were we to use Karl Young's definition that languages
be defined simply on the basis of whether people can understand each other we
get a shifting picture. Two traders in a market can understand each other
perhaps for a basic transaction and can, at this point, be said to speak the
same idiom.
"...the idea that there is anything like a pure speaker of a
language. That's certainly untrue. Every one of us is a multilingual speaker.
Every one of us has grown up in some strange mixture of dialects. Our parents
spoke one way and our friends spoke a different way, and they spoke a different
way on the radio. The whole idea of one state of mind is already a high level
of idealisation.... In the real world, everyone grows
up in a complex multilingual situation.
This comes back to my first point: that the notion
'English' really has no clear meaning. What we call English is something that
includes the way you speak and I speak and the way they speak in
This kaleidoscopic regress need not stop there. Each one of us evolves
and creates his or her language afresh with age.
If we go along with this idea of stable dialects
perhaps the figure of 5,000 will seem a fair one. Such a figure need not
astonish although it may well be conservative. What is more likely to surprise
is the almost total dominance of a very small percentage of these 5,000. By
listing a mere 5 (English, Chinese, Spanish, Russian and Hindi) we can account
for the home language - and here we start to use the term as we wish to use it
- of nearly half the world's population. By doubling the number we can account
for 60% and about 2% of the total number of languages account for 95% of the
world's population.
Even here, amongst the leaders, the fortunes are very
varied as they swim around in some kind of linguistic meme pool. And as the
meme theorists (Dawkins etc.) suggest external factors change and allow for
different fortunes. People are of course familiar with a view of history which
sees colonialism as a driving force. We are used to speaking of the Greek,
Roman and British empires even if the American one sticks more in the throat.
The influences of their languages always leave an indelible mark on the areas
they visit. We will return to this matter.
Another significant factor in language survival -
although less so today - is colonialism's opposite: isolation. Basque might be
seen as an example. It's fortunes now are waning. Even
though it is one of only a handful of non Indo-European languages in
Parentage and the education system would seem to be of
far more significance in more recent times and the latter is often linked
closely with colonialism and state power. The education system is used in two
essential ways here. Firstly, to establish linguistic standards thus helping to
preserve the 'purity' of the language and, secondly, to establish an elite who
in turn become the bastion of the language. Clearly this is one level of what
we might call horizontal exclusion - an identifying factor of social class.
These factors however only account for how such stable
dialects survive rather than the more dynamic notion of language spread. Here
the determining factor is the willingness of users of other languages to use
the language in question as an auxiliary.
For a language to spread it must have its initial base, the vitality of
which will depend largely on what it is used for - commerce, culture,
technology, media. These usages must be essentially
cross-cultural. Using language for mono-cultural reasons - literature,
folksongs - is another instance of the isolationist drive. For it is to the
extent that a language be used in the former way that
its influence can grow and spread. Indeed it can grow exponentially (population
growth in certain areas of Latin America and
The technological changes of the last 30 years,
perhaps dating to the launch of Sputnik one, propelled the two super powers and
their languages to the fore in world developments. We can get a feel for this
secondary, auxiliary usage of the two languages by looking at the international
world of scientific research. In 1980 - well in the middle of the cold war era
- 72.6% of the articles published in Index Medicus
were in English and Russian came in second place with 6.3%. German came third.
The same year a figure of 64.7% of the articles in Chemical
Extracts were in English. As Wardhaugh was
able to comment, "it is difficult to understand
how a scientist who cannot read English or who does not have immediate access
to good translations from English can hope to keep up with current scientific
activity".
Living now in the post cold war period and given the
seemingly unchallenged global policy coming from the liberal democracies Anglo
American is triumphant on the linguistic battlefield. One estimate now puts the
number of English speakers at some 350,000,000 more than half of whom live in
In addition to this figure there are probably an equal
number of second language speakers and a third group, the area which is perhaps
now seeing the fastest growth because of technological developments in the
sphere of telecommunications, of those who use it in a casual, raw manner to
understand the flow of information that is going past them.
For those who believe there might be something wrong
with the American Dream this may come as alarming - equally alarming is the
possibly greater likelihood that it will not be noticed. With international
news services, subsidised books and cinema goes a
particular world viewpoint as seen from a Western 'developed' perspective.
There is no sign of its spread decreasing. On the
contrary no realistic competitor is in sight. French is being squeezed by the
tide. As Wardhaugh points out, 'That tide may someday
change and come to favour some other language than
English but only in a very different world from the one that currently exists
and one that those who presently speak the language would likely view as
catastrophically different'.
Perhaps. But there will also be those who will realise the appeal of
Talk in these terms will of course bring to mind
evolutionary themes and from there to ecological ones. All this is reminiscent
of what is happening as technology sweeps through other kingdoms. The causes
are sometimes similar with the habitats (this time cultural) being destroyed by
what has been called the "cultural nerve gas" of the electronic
media.
One can argue, strongly, that the technologies at
humanities disposal should be made widespread yet we know that the planet can't
take the strain of the uniformity of the petrol economy - a uniformity which
needs to be challenged.
Anglo-American has a fashionable, coca cola appeal. At
any given time 100,000,000 mainly young people are studying it. For them it
represents a certain kind of economic and cultural freedom that they value. By
putting the issue thus we are, however, not facing up to the danger we have
already alluded to. To the degree that language is a nationalist and cultural
cement the coming linguistic hegemony of Anglo American represents the next
stage in empire: the voice of Anglo American is the voice of Bretton Woods and Western neo-liberalism. Language itself
can be a highway laid down to allow power and wealth to seep up from the
periphery and back to the imperial core. In an age of information this link is
perhaps stronger than it has ever been before.
As the dominance of Anglo-American goes forward
unchecked other languages die off. This should worry us all in the same way
that the burning of a library would. As Krauss writes, "Any language is a
supreme achievement of a uniquely human collective genius, as divine and
endless a mystery as a living organism".
To lose the diversity of language within the world
would be a tragedy. Some will inevitably disappear. But another viewpoint
allows us to see how the modern forms of communication can help rather than
hinder diversity. In the same way that English has spread from the core to the
periphery so the Internet with its notion of networking and isolated groupings
- mailing lists for example - may offer a reprieve for
c.1999
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