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Babel and the market: Geostrategy for minority languages
Abstract
Assuming that a language has some control over its destinies will help us outline the appropriate actions to be taken by a political decision maker who, typically, makes the same assumption of governability when he or she wishes to guide a minority language towards security and prosperity. Of course, most languages are far from having the control of the functions of goal setting, integration, adaptation and socialisation required by Parsonian theory to distinguish a system from a set. Most languages lack pilots; most of them are like leaves in the wind. But major standardised languages have at least some control over their own evolution, and those that are supported by a government have ways of steering their relations among the other languages with which they are linked by communication, competition, cooperation and conflict. What should the geopolitical survival strategy of such a language be when it is confronted with a more powerful competitor? The social sciences are often said to abound in theories but to be short of laws. That this be so makes it all the more important that we give due attention to one of these laws, a law that governs language contact: the ancient law of Babel (Laponce 1984; 1992; 2001). x2018;Behold, they are one people, they have only one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do: and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible to them. Come, let us go down, and then confuse their languages, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth …’
... Scientific articles in the field of chemistry in different languages(1978 to 1998, in %) Source:Laponce (2003): Basis of analysis: "Chemical Abstracts" ...
Globalisation and the political process of European integration opened the European Union member states to one another. As different EU member states have different languages, participation in globalisation and the process of European integration is dependent on Europeans’ ability to speak the languages of others. Those who speak multiple languages can more easily come into contact with citizens of other countries, conduct business and diplomacy, cooperate academically, organise protests across national boundaries, or enter into romantic relations with them. In short, they can socialise transnationally in a number of different dimensions. Those who only speak their native language are, in contrast, tied to their home country and can only take slight advantage of the perks of a united Europe and a globalised world. Possessing transnational linguistic capital is a deciding factor in whether or not someone can participate in an emerging European society; it becomes a new measure of social inequality, a resource that can either lead to societal inclusion or exclusion.The question central to our study is to what degree citizens in the twenty‐ seven EU member states possess transnational linguistic capital and how to explain the differences in multilingualism both between and within the member states. We present a general explanatory model for foreign language proficiency, create hypotheses from this model and test them empirically. Drawing on a survey conducted in twenty‐seven European countries it can be shown that the peoples’ ability to speak different languages can be very well predicted with the help of the different explanatory factors. We find that country size, the prevalence of a respondent’s native language, the linguistic difference between one’s mother tongue and the foreign language, and age affect language acquisition negatively, whereas a country’s level of education has a positive influence. Using Bourdieu’s theory of social class, we show that besides other factors a respondent’s social class position and the level of education are important micro‐level factors that help to increase a person’s transnational linguistic capital.One must put these results in the context of the state of the art. The analysis of multilingualism is a major topic in linguistics, psychology, and education. The societal conditions in which language learners are embedded are hardly taken into account in these studies. This would not be worth discussing any further if sociology was not relevant to multilingualism; but the contrary seems to be true. Our analysis shows that the neglected societal conditions are actually of central importance in determining transnational linguistic capital.
Estudio longitudinal de las lenguas incluidas en todos los planes y programas de la educación pública de todos los niveles del sistema educativo de Uruguay desde 1941 a 2007. Investigación curricular realizada como integrante del equipo técnico de apoyo de la Comisión de Políticas Lingüísticas en la Educación Pública de Uruguay.
Reveladores de uma cultura própria, os aspectos folclóricos encontram-se a outros níveis que não só os da tradição oral. Alfredo Keil e Viana da Mota, tentaram, já no final do século XIX, que a música portuguesa tivesse uma individualidade própria. O caracter nacional na arte erudita nascia assente na música popular, fazendo fé no regional para afirmar um nacionalismo latente. Mais tarde Fernando Lopes-Graça revela-se na forma como trabalha a melodia e a harmonia, o ritmo e o tempo a partir dos elementos do folclore nacional. Denunciador de ritmos e modos de organização sonora próprios, trabalha-os por forma a conseguir traços dum nacionalismo que se torna veículo de cultura e saber, identificador dum povo e dum outro modo de pensar.
Também, Lopes-Graça exterioriza uma ação extremada tanto na vida política como na vida social e artística portuguesas, não só pelas pesquisas que efectua com vista à procura da alma e do carácter do povo português, mas também pela sua intervenção enquanto homem de esquerda. Neste sentido, Lopes-Graça foi membro activo da acção que, a partir dos anos 20, se travou contra o obscurantismo escondido numa cultura elitista de expressão académica, lutando pela difusão da cultura pelo povo português. Esta luta incluía a criação de pequenas bibliotecas, a realização de conferências, debates e palestras por intelectuais progressistas, etc. As actividades junto do Coro de Amadores de Música possuíram sempre um denominador comum: o amor à liberdade, a resistência ao regime fascista através da actividade cultural, nomeadamente da música coral; a sua produção, saída do uso da canção popular, extensa e significativa.
Nesta comunicação analisaremos a forma como o compositor utiliza a canção popular da região da Beira na sua obra para Coro. Buscaremos igualmente a forma como esta se torna o reflexo da cultura e simbolismo de um povo, e como a criação de símbolos nacionais definem estruturas musicais plenas de significação.
Résumé Cet article envisage quelques mesures normatives de la récente politique linguistique soutenue par l’Union Européenne (UE). On en dispute ici certains aspects problématiques et contradictoires. L’analyse considère deux différents secteurs: a) la protection des langues minoritaires, et b) le régime des langues de travail à l’intérieur des institutions européennes mêmes. En ce qui concerne les langues minoritaires l’article prend en compte la Charte Européenne pour les Langues Régionales ou Minoritaires du 1er mars 1998 et en met en évidence les points de force ainsi que les faiblesses. Les contradictions entre les aspects théoriques et pratiques sont encore plus évidentes lorsqu’on prend en considération le régime linguistique des langues de travail à l’intérieur des institutions européennes. En ce cas la proclamation du plurilinguisme est complètement bouleversée par la pratique effective du monolinguisme anglais.
Les enquêtes menées par la Commission européenne en 2001 montrent que la Flandre est bien plus multilingue que la Wallonie, ce qui est sans doute un fait bien connu, mais la différence est considérable. Alors que 59 % et 53 % des Flamands connaissent le français ou l’anglais respectivement, seulement 19 % et 17 % des Wallons connaissent le néerlandais ou l’anglais. Dans une Europe de plus en plus multilingue, 57 % des Wallons déclarent connaître le français uniquement. On dira que cela va mieux du côté des jeunes. A peine ! Si 12 % des Flamands de moins de 40 ans se déclarent unilingues, ce pourcentage s’élève à 51 % dans la même classe d’âge en Wallonie. Le syndrome d’H ‑ du nom de ce personnage qui a signé le contrat Francorchamps sans très bien le comprendre parce qu’il ne connaissait pas l’anglais ‑ est plus répandu que ce qu’on pouvait croire, et on est en droit de se demander s’il est compatible avec les déclarations de faire de la Wallonie une technopole. Comment exporte-t-on si on ne parle pas la langue des pays importateurs, ou tout au moins l’anglais qui devient, et ce pas nécessairement pour de bonnes raisons ou des raisons que l’on aime, la langue internationale. Mais il n’y a pas que l’anglais. Nous vivons, que nous le voulions ou non, dans un pays bilingue et nombreux sont ceux qui insistent sur la solidarité entre régions. Si le Sud veut vraiment que le Nord reste solidaire, la moindre chose est de connaître sa langue, même si c’est de façon imparfaite, même si le français est une langue plus internationale que le néerlandais et que la logique économique induit naturellement plus de Flamands à apprendre le français que des francophones à connaître le néerlandais. Il faut reconnaître que ces questions ont été ouvertement posées dans le Plan Marshall. Les mesures que celui-ci préconise vont certes dans la bonne direction, mais sont sans doute très insuffisantes pour combler le retard dans un monde qui bouge très vite.
Les enquêtes menées par la Commission européenne en 2001 montrent que la Flandre est bien plus multilingue que la Wallonie, ce qui est sans doute un fait bien connu, mais la différence est considérable. Alors que 59 % et 53 % des Flamands connaissent le français ou l’anglais respectivement, seulement 19 % et 17 % des Wallons connaissent le néerlandais ou l’anglais. Dans une Europe de plus en plus multilingue, 57 % des Wallons déclarent connaître le français uniquement. On dira que cela va mieux du côté des jeunes. A peine ! Si 12 % des Flamands de moins de 40 ans se déclarent unilingues, ce pourcentage s’élève à 51 % dans la même classe d’âge en Wallonie. Le syndrome d’H ‑ du nom de ce personnage qui a signé le contrat Francorchamps sans très bien le comprendre parce qu’il ne connaissait pas l’anglais ‑ est plus répandu que ce qu’on pouvait croire, et on est en droit de se demander s’il est compatible avec les déclarations de faire de la Wallonie une technopole. Comment exporte-t-on si on ne parle pas la langue des pays importateurs, ou tout au moins l’anglais qui devient, et ce pas nécessairement pour de bonnes raisons ou des raisons que l’on aime, la langue internationale. Mais il n’y a pas que l’anglais. Nous vivons, que nous le voulions ou non, dans un pays bilingue et nombreux sont ceux qui insistent sur la solidarité entre régions. Si le Sud veut vraiment que le Nord reste solidaire, la moindre chose est de connaître sa langue, même si c’est de façon imparfaite, même si le français est une langue plus internationale que le néerlandais et que la logique économique induit naturellement plus de Flamands à apprendre le français que des francophones à connaître le néerlandais. Il faut reconnaître que ces questions ont été ouvertement posées dans le Plan Marshall. Les mesures que celui-ci préconise vont certes dans la bonne direction, mais sont sans doute très insuffisantes pour combler le retard dans un monde qui bouge très vite.
Jean A. Laponce contributed significantly to the study of political science, particularly in the fields of French and comparative politics, pluralism, the meaning of right and left, and the politics of ethnicity and language. His most influential writings focused on the politics of multilingual societies. He examined the place of language from three perspectives: the territorial imperative—a bounded formal space providing safety and dominance for a single language; the problems of nonterritorially based linguistic minorities; and the rivalries and conflicts between languages in contact. Finally, he dealt with the survival of minority languages and the fate of languages globally. This review article evaluates Laponce’s contributions to political science.
The dynamics of LMLS at the societal and individual levelsLanguage maintenance (LM), language shift (LS) and language loss (LL)Concluding remarksReferences
The text discusses the issue of internationalization of Portuguese caused by the international repositioning of the CPLP countries in the beginning of the XXI century, the strategy and the internationalization efforts of its management in the wake of the Orthographic Agreement of 1990 and, finally, the place Portuguese may have in more international institutions. Special attention is given to the Brazilian case in the context of a functional multilingualism. The article concludes that it is still underexplored the potential of Portuguese as an instrument for internationalization.
Ce numéro de Regards économiques est consacré à la question des connaissances linguistiques en Belgique et dans ses trois régions (Bruxelles, Flandre, Wallonie). Les enquêtes montrent que la Flandre est bien plus multilingue, ce qui est sans doute un fait bien connu, mais la différence est considérable : alors que 59 % et 53 % des Flamands connaissent le français ou l'anglais respectivement, seulement 19 % et 17 % des Wallons connaissent le néerlandais ou l'anglais. Les mesures préconisées par le Plan Marshall vont dans la bonne direction, mais sont sans doute très insuffisantes pour combler le retard.
Marketization, deregulation and participation are the major developments summarily referred to under the heading of globalization. Increasing interdependence and electronic communications that facilitate the exchange of information among individuals, organizations and societies are vital parts of this process. The spread of English, too, has been described as a causal and concomitant factor of globalization which, however, has many other implications for the world's languages. In this paper I want to make some suggestions as to how globalization and language interact and, more specifically, how language regimes change under the influence of economic, political and cultural developments.
We analyze challenges encountered by multilingual societies: linguistic standardization, linguistic disenfranchisement, and the optimal choice of linguistic regime. While the analysis is conceived generally to apply to any multilingual society, we pay particular attention to linguistic policies in the European Union. We analyze the optimal choice of linguistic regime, taking into account possible externalities between languages and dynamic effects of language proficiency. We also discuss the feasibility of linguistic reform in the EU. JEL Codes: D70, O52, Z13. and CEPR. 2 "Languages are raised as flags by dominated people." Claude Hagège (2000, p. 13). "This world, which puts a banquet for all, then slams the door in the noses of so many, is simultaneously equalizing and unequal: equalizing in the ideas and habits it imposes and unequal in the opportunities it offers." Eduardo Galeano, cited by Tonkin (2003, p. 321).
The European Union has recently expanded from 15 to 25 countries. In line with this enlargement, the list of official EU languages has grown from 11 to 20. Currently, the EU extends equal treatment to all member countries' official languages by providing translations for documents and interpreting services. This, however, is costly, especially when recognizing that many Europeans speak one of the procedural languages of the EU, English, French or German, either as their native language or as a foreign language. We compute disenfranchisement rates that would result from using only the three procedural languages for all EU business. These three languages could serve as pivotal languages to which and from which the 17 other languages could be translated. We argue that an efficient solution would be to decentralize the provision of translations, so that each country (language) could decide to use the transfer from the EU the way it wants, with translation into its own language as one among the possible uses.
This article deals with the linguistic situation in the contemporary world. It analyses that situation in correlation to ethnocultural identification processes. The starting-point of the article is the fact that, from the era of Romanticism, when national languages were inaugurated as markers of national/State affiliation, the process began of the destruction of numerous (so-called small) languages, which became irrelevant and out-of-date in that sense. That process was intensified during the 20th century, more particularly during its closing decades, when the process of neo-liberal globalisation made English the global world language, while, parallely, world language diversification was being drastically threatened. On the basis of contemporary ethnology-like and anthropology-like theories of identity, this paper examines the hypothesis on the relativity of the role of cultural repertoire content in identification processes, and the transposition of the importance of language as an ethnocultural marker to certain other elements of culture. In other words, globalisation opposes localisation, which contributes to the viability of local languages and disrupts the global trend of the new world linguistic order (with the dominance of English). So, why do languages manage to survive? By way of adequate institutionalised assistance, primarily State/national policies and their implementation in practice for the correct treatment of thousands of endangered, so-called small languages, as well as the support of non-governmental organisations and the like, and this paper offers an answer to that question on the basis of research into the speech experience of people: because languages are part of cultural and ethnonational identity, while identities are deeply entrenched in the awareness of their speakers. Local languages often serve as markers of "authenticity", while they do not only represent the essence of Humanity's global history but also the existence, in general, of a particular community. Linguistic pluralism, in a situation in which each language is designated by its own societal function, could well be part of the future of the human species. In that sense, it is also reasonable to believe in the survival of identity diversity. In other words, local identities could survive, too, since language is only one of the dimensions of identity and, since, in accordance with contemporary ethnology-like and anthropology-like theories, change of one element in the cultural repertoire of a community does not necessarily alter its "original" identity. Apart from that, linguistic adaptation springs from the process of localisation, and a group searching for identity can, once again, orient itself to its culture, that is, back to itself. Finally, it is concluded in this paper that the mother tongue that a group has replaced by some other language can continue to exist as a factor of identity, admittedly not on the communicational but on the manifestation level. And, in accordance with modern theories on social development, a sense of community can also continue to be conceived with the help of the lost language. A consequence of all this will be that identities will be transformed and redefined through processes of localisation, and shifts and transpositions of identity factors.
The world language system is profoundly affected by the increase in the frequency and density of communication on a world scale. Most of the languages spoken today are not expected to survive the century and most of those surviving will lose or fail to get control of some higher functions of communication, notably in the fields of commerce and science. The minority languages best able to resist the pressure of more powerful competitors are those having a government as their champion, and their best overall protective strategy remains territorialization, either within the boundaries of a unilingual state or, in the case of multilingual societies, on the territorial model of Switzerland and Belgium that juxtaposes rather than mixes languages at the regional level.