Jean Laponce’s research while affiliated with University of British Columbia and other places

A comparison of question, majority and division of the referendum area in the light of some of the 190 odd sovereignty referendums held since 1791.

Many are the terms used to describe either groups or communities having in common actual or assumed inherited characteristics. So many and so ill-defined are these terms that they stand in the way of proper comparative research, at least when the comparison involves many ethnies, nations, and countries. The article recommends the use of more discriminating criteria to avoid confusion between “origin” and “identity,” between “grouping” and “community,” and between the ethnic and the national. The author concludes that, for the sake of theory building, hypotheses are, at present, normally better tested by comparing a few well-selected cases than by means of large multistate data sets.

This report on research in progress is based on data obtained through written questionnaires administered to UBC (University of British Columbia) and Ottawa University students who were asked to rank the importance and the degree of satisfaction associated with 14 characteristics of either the self or the social environment (gender, age, nationality, profession, religion, preferred political party, place of birth, province of residence, city of residence, university, ethnic group, language, family, and friends). Using gender, language, and race as examples, the author shows the usefulness of a role by role approach in comparative analysis, notably for the study of minority groups.

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 …’

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.

Returning to Babel The language system is profoundly affected, at the local level as well as at the level of the world, by the increase in the frequency and density of communication. Many of the minor languages spoken today are not expected to survive the century and major languages will lose, at least in part, their control over higher functions of communication, notably in the fields of commerce and science. For a minority language, the best overall strategy is that of geographical concentration, either within a unilingual state or, in the case of multilingual societies, by means of internal boundaries of the Swiss and Belgian types that juxtapose rather than mix the languages in contact. The minority languages best able to resist the assimilation pressure of more powerful competitors are those having a government as their champion.