Killer Languages

1
Killer Languages?

• Linguistic Imperialism Language Death, or New
  Languages?

2
Foucault A (Brief) Re-Cap

• Necessary condition for the operation of power?
• Resistance
• Cannot have power without resistance
• Though sometimes we may legitimise power by our
  resistance! (E.g. by voting against the
  government, you are legitimising democracy)
• But resistance can also be seen as positive,
  emancipatory (remember Foucault himself was quite
  pessimistic about this potential though but
  this interpretation is useful for language policy
  research)
• Power/Knowledge interlinked the production of
  knowledge is a form of power. (So we have to be
  careful about what linguists say )

3
Language Shift and Death

• Language death when the last speaker of a
  language dies
• Language shift the process by which communities
  adopt another language
• Language shift death Cornish (to English)
• Shift without death Welsh (to English) Norwegian
  (to English) in the US
• Death without shift Tasmanian etc. normally
  because population is killed.
• Approximately 6000 languages alive today.
  (Crystal, 200011)
• Only 4 of the globe's 6 billion speak 96 of the
  languages (p 14)
• Perhaps half will die in the next century?

4
What causes language shift and death?

• Difficult to pinpoint exact causes that will
  always accurately predict language shift or death
  but
• War and conflict, especially genocide
• Population movement e.g. migration, re-settlement
  or taking of traditional land
• Also (similarly) re-drawing of national
  boundaries in e.g. colonial Africa
• Economic reasons such as choosing to adopt a
  majority language e.g. for jobs
• Demographics (e.g. declining birth rate, exogamy)
• Institutional support whether laissez-faire or
  overt proscription
• Etc. But often a combination of different
  historical social and political factors (see
  Mesthrie et al 2000)

5
Language Death vs. Language Murder

• Language death
• Languages just disappear naturally
• Languages commit suicide speakers are leaving
  them voluntarily for instrumental reasons and for
  their own good
• (From Skuttknab-Kangas 2000)

• Language Murder
• Arson the libraries (of specific local knowledge
  encoded in each language) are set on fire
• Educational systems, mass media, etc participate
  in committing linguistic and cultural genocide

6
Linguicism, Language Murder

• Linguicism the notion that language inequality
  is a form of discrimination (a la race, gender)
  that prevents equal access to societal power
  (Phillipson, 1997 Skuttnab-Kanghas 1988)
  produced as statements of truth in discourses on
  languages. E.g. AAVE is illogical or not a
  proper language
• Language Murder (or Linguistic Genocide) the
  active attempts to get rid of languages and
  cultures, usually blamed on globalisation and
  its tendency towards homogenisation.
  (Skuttnab-Kangas 2000)

7
Killer Languages?

• English, Spanish, etc. the big languages
• Can be in contact situations (e.g. through
  colonialism, other forms of domination)
• But also as a result of neo-imperialist
  endeavours (e.g. learning English as a second
  language)
• British Council promotion of English
• English as natural and neutral means of
  international communication and other ideologies
  promoted in discourses on English
• Whether English is used by donor nations as a
  condition of e.g. aid, development, international
  co-operation (or whether English is perceived as
  such by recipient nations)
• But any language can be a killer language if
  it threatens minority languages
• Can threaten both indigenous minority languages,
  and minority immigrant
• Like carnivorous plants or cancerous cells,
  devouring other languages (Helsingin Sanomat
  24/8/04)

8
Linguistic Imperialism 1

• Linguistic imperialism is shorthand for a
  multitude of activities, ideologies and
  structural relationships. Linguistic imperialism
  takes place within an overarching structure of
  asymmetrical North/South relations, where
  language interlocks with other dimensions,
  cultural (particularly in education, science and
  the media), economic and political.
• For example if an aid project provides funds for
  language X, and not for language Y, when both X
  and Y are central to the linguistic ecology of a
  given country, there may be linguistic
  imperialism at play, especially if X is
  associated with the donor country, is the former
  colonial language, and is being used as a medium
  of education (for instance French in Senegal or
  English in Nigeria).
• (Phillipson, 1997)

9
Linguistic Imperialism 2

• Makerere conference Uganda 1961 was how a
  Western language and culture could enable Us to
  solve Their problems (good Orientalist stuff in
  Saids terms) (Phillipson 1997)
• So Killer Languages reproducing colonialist
  ideology (imperialism)
• As does development when done by, e.g. the
  World Bank, IMF etc.

10
Linguistic Imperialism and Killer Languages Some
Criticisms

• A small but growing body of ethnographic studies
  from the periphery suggests that pedagogies and
  textbooks from the center are not used in the
  prescribed manner in local classrooms, and that
  strategies of resistance against the discourses
  and ELT pedagogies are influenced by students
  own indigenous social and educational
  traditions. (Canagarajah, 1995 593, quoted,
  ironically, by Phillipson!)
• As we saw last week, teachers and students on
  the ground resist policy by interpreting them in
  their own way
• A special metalanguage has also emerged, in
  which languages are treated as agents and
  speakers of the endangered or dead languages only
  as victims. (Mufwene, ref)
• Fundamentally, the idea that it is languages
  themselves which are somehow agents of
  destruction of minority identities de-ascribes
  individual agency, and actually risks overlooking
  the historical, social and political reasons for
  dominance, paradoxically reducing the ability to
  challenge that dominance.

11
Linguistic Imperialism Some Criticisms

• In the same vein, the rhetoric has been less
  about the rights of speakers than about the
  rights of languages to survive (Skutnabb-Kangas
  2000, in Mufwene, ref. below)
• However the idea of language rights (e.g. the
  right to mother tongue language education) is
  tricky. E.g. European Charter on Minority
  Languages and Cultures is not binding as it has a
  clause to the effect that preceding UN laws and
  charters remain valid International Convent on
  Civil and Political Rights says that people have
  right to enjoy language and culture (so teaching
  a class in e.g. Welsh, which the ECMLC advocates,
  with an English speaker present ironically
  ignores their rights, and is technically
  illegal.)
• Politicians often criticised for not knowing
  about language issues, but also linguists can be
  criticised for not knowing about politics or
  international law!
• Should we have a right to e.g. English?
• Should we have a right to bilingualism?
• http//humanities.uchicago.edu/faculty/mufwene/pub
  lications/globalization-killerLanguages.pdf

12
Linguistic Imperialism Some Criticisms

• Completely ignores strategies of resistance and
  the fact that, as we saw last week, language
  policies produce unintended consequences.
• E.g. Welsh did not die, Cornish has been revived?
  Why? How?
• Point to be made that languages can be
  threatened, but what are the political and social
  resources that communities can/do deploy to
  maintain languages? Language movements?
• Looking at language death cases from a critical
  perspective can help identify what social and
  political resources were NOT used and how they
  might be used in the future.
• Resistance does not have to be political in the
  sense of e.g. language movements e.g. Western
  Apache anatomical terms applied to a car.
• Ignores that globalisation (and post-colonial
  identies) is more commonly now understood as a
  process of hybridisation of cultures, and local
  appropriation of globalised forms.
• E.g. different varieties of hip-hop across the
  world even McDonalds has local menus (and does
  not uniformly speak English)
• Role of language in globalisation may be
  overstated? (Mufwene)

13
Linguistic Imperialism Some Criticisms

• What about power/knowledge in that linguists are
  producing knowledge linguistics is both a
  discipline and a discourse?
• Can linguists tell people that they are not
  allowed to lose their languages? (Hale, 1992 40
  Ladefoged, 1992 810-11, in Mesthrie 2002272)
• What are the ideological assumptions that say
  languages should be saved in the first place?
• But then, are members of minority communities
  empowered with the knowledge to know what choices
  are available to them, and the consequences of
  those choices? (Mesthrie 2002274)

14
The Development of New Languages?

• Language contact situations can (and do) produce
  contact languages (i.e. a mixed language)
• Also produce pidgins, and later, creoles
  (Mufwene)
• They can add vitality and innovation to a new
  language by enriching the lexicon (Mesthrie 2000)
• This is why the language death argument as if
  languages were biological species is a bit
  odd if a dog and a bird are in the same house,
  the dog doesnt sprout wings, nor does the bird
  grow paws languages in contact can produce new
  languages. (May, 2003)