Language Death An Unstoppable Effect

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

ABSTRACT

Through this essay I plan to back the title I have given to my essay; "Language death: An unstoppable effect of Linguistic Imperialism if not handled in time", in order to do this I will explain what linguistic imperialism is and explore its negative and positive effects, I will also evaluate the possible causes and consequences of linguistic imperialism; mainly taking into account the term language death which I consider it to be one of the most outstanding consequences. Also I will name some of the attempts that have been made in order to decrease language death before languages are lost and nothing could be done in order to get them back. However, I must say it is not something easy to do.

The reason why I believe the attempts that are made in order to preserve the isolated languages, are important is because a language is the representation of a society, its identity and culture, but we are not giving as much importance as we should to the extinction of these languages, because the world right now is focused on globalization, which main intention is to maintain a continuous communication in the world, and this cannot happen through the use of isolated languages.

Through this essay I was finally able to conclude that accepting linguistic imperialism is not only harming the isolated languages but also the communities that communicate through those languages, I also stated that I’m against linguistic imperialism and the consequences that are appearing because of it but still I have to accept that eradicating linguistic imperialism is not something easy to do because it spreads through different means as media, books, movies, etc, which are things we have interaction with on a daily basis.

Words abstract: 289

INDEX

INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………………………..

1

1. LINGUISTIC IMPERIALISM NOT JUST A DEFINITION ……………….

1

1.1. THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF ENGLISH ……………………….

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2. THE POSSIBLE CAUSES OF LINGUISTIC IMPERIALISM …………..

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3. THE CONSEQUENCES OF LINGUISTIC IMPERIALISM ……………..

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CONCLUSION ………………………………………………………………….

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BIBLIOGRAPHY ……………………………………………………………….

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LANGUAGE DEATH: AN UNSTOPPABLE EFFECT OF LINGUISTIC IMPERIALISM IF NOT HANDLED IN TIME

INTODUCTION

Most of the people are not familiar with the term linguistic imperialism, but even the existence of this term is unknown, it doesn’t stop it from being an everyday growing issue. Linguistic imperialism can be seen where "the dominance of English is asserted and maintained by the establishment of continuous reconstitution of structural and cultural inequalities between English and other languages" (Phillipson, 1992, p. 47). However linguistic imperialism is not only an issue that concerns the English language, but it’s also related with other powerful languages in the world which are affecting the ones that are not as strong, what at the end might lead them to their extinction and only the "fittest" language will survive. What I pretend to develop throughout this essay is initially to expand the knowledge of linguistic imperialism; secondly I’ll give an example of linguistic imperialism by using the case of English, afterward I will present the possible consequences linguistic imperialism might lead us if it is not controlled. It will be evident that throughout this essay I will include my different points of views of linguistic imperialism.

LINGUISTIC IMPERIALISM IS NOT JUST A DEFINITION

Previously I gave the former definition for linguistic imperialism but still I believe is not so clear what it really means. From my point of view the term linguistic imperialism can be defined itself by defining the two words that conform this term. The word linguistics is referred to language and Imperialism is defined as "a type of relationship whereby one society can dominate another" (Phillipson, 1992, p. 52), this is important because what it means for one society to dominate another is that the one that dominates the other is acquiring control and power and those two things are mostly what countries and people are looking for and the reason why wars have been created. In this type of imperialism only the strongest languages will be the ones that control the others, but it’s not only that. The thing about language is that in controls communication and how people communicate among their society, so if these strong languages subdue the smaller ones that are considered less important the languages that rule the other will not only have the control of communication but also on how people interact and by the end in the own culture of the society; because linguistic imperialism includes the insertion of culture and costumes of the country were the language comes. According to the Ethnologue that’s a kind of encyclopedia that talks about the living languages nowadays, says "it turns out that 389 (or nearly 6%) of the world’s languages have at least one million speakers and account for 94% of the world’s population. By contrast, the remaining 94% of languages are spoken by only 6% of the world’s people." (Lewis, 2009), and the three most spoken languages are Chinese with 1213 million speakers, Spanish with 329 million and English with 328 million speakers. (Lewis, 2009)

According to the UNESCO 50% of the world’s languages are endangered of extinction, from my perspective this is the result of the work of the governments of different countries that try to make an internationalization of their language and that has been shown through the multiple adaptations that have been created to refer to some terms in other languages and for example my mother tongue that’s Spanish, in which day by day there have been introduced not in the dictionary but in our daily way of speaking words that we use from other languages. However I cannot say that linguistic imperialism only leads to negative aspects as language extinction, because we live in a period of time were globalization is essential for us; we are connected with the whole world because of the different technological devices that have been created through time, because of this we are able to acquire knowledge of other countries cultures and costumes within seconds, this can be considered positive but it also has its consequences, it makes easier to communicate information from one country to another but it also contributes to a faster spread of linguistic imperialism.

There is one more term that is needed in order to understand what linguistic imperialism means, and that’s linguicism; linguicism is another term that is found in the book of Robert Phillipson that he defines as "[…] linguicism refers exclusively to ideologies and structures where language is the means for effecting or maintaining an unequal allocation of power and resources. This could apply, for instance, in a school in which the mother tongues of some children, from an immigrant or indigenous minority background, are ignored, and this has consequences for their learning. Linguicism is also in operation if a teacher stigmatizes the local dialect spoken by the children and this has consequences of a structural kind, that is, there is an unequal division of power and resources as a result." (Phillipson, 1992, p. 55), what Phillipson tries to expose in this fragment of his book is how since the moment we are born, when we are at school, etc, we are able to see how there’s an inequality between languages, one example of this kind of inequality is that in this case in my own experience I did not take long to realize when I was little that most of the programs, realities, movies, music, and other kind of things came from other countries, especially the United States.

THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF ENGLISH

In order to give an example of what I have been referring to, I’m going to mention some facts of the internationalization of English. The reason why I decided to use English as an example it’s because I believe that it affects people around the world in different kinds of ways. Also it’s a language I have more connection with and interaction in my daily life besides Spanish that as I have mentioned before is my mother tongue.

English internationalization has come to various countries in different kinds of ways. It has come through media, advertisement, movies, books, music, technology, social networks, etc. However, people do not realize how this might affect them in their lives, but it does. A language alone cannot accomplish what various languages like English have without any help, that’s why English learning courses are in a higher demand day by day, according to the British Council’s website "one out of four of the world’s population speak English to some level of competence; demand from the other three quarters is increasing", the reason why English has such a demand is because the opportunities that people think they would get by learning it, the issue of linguistic imperialism is not that the people are trying to learn different languages as English because that helps us to expand our way of thinking and our point of view of different things by getting to know other languages, it brings opportunities to people to study, work, etc. However the real problem behind linguistic imperialism is that it affects other languages; in the case of English I have seen how little by little my generation has introduced English terms to our vocabulary even if it’s not accurate to use it, which I believe it modifies how people communicate, and the languages start losing their richness and without realizing it we have just not included terms, but we have also been including customs and parts of the culture of the English spoken cultures which not in all cases it’s something beneficial.

In order to show this adaptation of the customs I will give an example which is the Americanization of Japan. The term Americanization is something like an action of making a culture, a person or a place to be more American, and this is what it’s happening worldwide and in the case of this example in Japan or that’s what Ralph Payne (1977) shows by stating the following "There is much Americanization on the surface. The affluent Ginza shopping area, Tokyo’s Fifth Avenue, is dotted with McDonalds, Dunkin’ donuts, and Kentucky Fried Chicken shops. The Japanese in Tokyo seem remarkably able to instantly synthesize American fashions, food, and ideas into Japanese with "foreign" flavor" (Payne, 1977, pag. 81 - 82), this was written in 1977, and nowadays the Americanization keeps on going, but it is not only in Japan but in other parts of the world.

As I said before the internationalization of English can appear in different kinds of ways, one of the most important ones I believe is advertisement, for example in my country, Colombia, there are various posters in the streets that include propaganda in English, even though we live in a Spanish speaker country, famous brands like Nike with its slogan "Just do It", LG "Life’s Good", etc. It might seem silly but this is how little by little English starts to be present in our daily lives without realizing it, the issue is not only these words, for some time now there has been a very popular commercial of an online site to learn English called Open English, this site was created some years ago in order to drive people’s attention to learn English in a rather comic way, but when you watch the commercials you are able to see that what the company tries is to make fun of the people that don’t speak English fluently and that don´t use technology in order to learn it; what I’m trying to say is that even in those types of commercials the relation between language and technology, and job opportunities begins. This relation is important because both technology and job opportunities are subjects of interest for people around the world, that’s the reason why I believe that in these types of commercials both are included, because by including these types of subjects of interest the commercial probably would get more attention from the viewer.

THE POSSIBLE CAUSES OF LINGUISTIC IMPERIALISM

There are various causes for the creation of linguistic imperialism, from my point of view I think that the greatest reason why this type of imperialism appeared is because the everyday desire of the human being for power, there have been wars fought because of it, but why do we want to gain power? I believe simply because we don’t want to be forgotten or at least we want our culture and heritage to prevail.

As I mentioned before there are ways in which we can get in touch with languages we don´t have interaction on an everyday basis, and one of the ways we are able to get in touch with those languages is through music. Every day we are able to hear different types of songs either through internet, radio, or any other way; it doesn’t matter what the song say or in what language it is, if a person likes the song that person would probably try to pronounce the words of the song, even if the person gets it wrong, and that happens a lot in the younger generations. Also one amazing fact is that little by little music has made a change in which in one song there could easily be three different languages, which increases the rate of how the different languages spread through the world.

Technology is also an aspect that allows linguistic imperialism to spread easily, we live in a world in which we have immediate information of other countries and we are connected with the entire world, and with it we are able to see how to be competitive. Nowadays we have to at least learn a second language, we live in a period of time were we have to make ourselves attractive to universities, works, etc. This makes us more dependable of the most important languages in the world, because they are the ones that control the economy, technology, business, etc. This happens due to the fact that, before people only felt that members from the higher classes were able to study and go to a university and that the competition would only encompass the persons that are from your country, but it’s not like that anymore. The reason why I come up talking about this kind of topic was to show how we are affected by the powerful languages because of the wish and desire that we have to move forward, get good careers, jobs, etc; so is not just that little by little there has been an introduction of different languages to the countries, but that also we have become dependable of them in order to be able to compete in a world that according to Darwin "the fittest" are the ones that will survive, or in this case "the most successful".

However not all the languages are able to compete with the powerful ones, due to globalization small communities each time will try to look for more interaction with the world, it is hard for them to keep isolated in a world in which we are apart just by the click of a mouse; this small communities have normally a language of their own, but that language will be start to seem useless from the point of view of the people in the community and without even knowing they will start leaving it aside, what demonstrates that this fight for language survival is not equal for all of us.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF LINGUISTIC IMPERIALISM

As I have said before it is believed that around 50% of the world’s languages will disappear by the end of this century as a consequence of linguistic imperialism partially in my point of view. I believe this because when different languages gain more and more power the smaller ones start to disappear due to the fact that people do not consider it has any importance anymore, for example tribe members of different countries may that by speaking these isolated languages that hardly anyone else knows but the small community of the tribe, they would not have a professional qualification by talking these languages; because of this people from small communities that have this isolated languages decide that is better to give up on the language, because they don’t see a future for their language in a world where the powerful languages keep on ruling and isolated languages are just forgotten. For example in Colombia there are young people that come from the indigenous tribes to the city in order to go to the university, but they arrive to the universities believing that by speaking their isolated language and Spanish they are already speaking two languages; however the universities asked to them to learn English as a second language as if their mother tongue, which is the isolated language, doesn’t count.

When the isolated languages are forgotten it has a specific name, it is called language death. Language death occurs "in unstable bilingual or multilingual speech communities as a result of language shift from a regressive minority language to a dominant majority language." (Dressler, 1977). One example to show this is the case of Brazil; indigenous people in Brazil are about two tenths of the country’s population and are divided in different tribes, which in total speak around 170 languages, and all of them are in danger of extinction (Barksdale), and all around the world in places like Africa, Europe, Japan, etc, isolated languages are endangered as the ones in Brazil, they could disappear any day.

I may seem sometimes that this extinction of the different languages is not such a bad thing, because we would reach a point in which there would be one language for the world, making it easier to communicate, but even if that happens, it wouldn’t compare to the large loss of language and cultural diversity, for a common language, and having this common language may lead to some negative consequences, one consequence I believe it would be that by having just one language it would mean giving the control of how we communicate, interact, or even think to a small group of people.

"The limits of my language mean the limits of my world." (Wittgenstein, 1922), the reason why I use this quote is to express better the idea I was developing before of the creation of a common language and its consequences. I believe that at one point the world may have to decide which language will become universal and we have been able to see that that battle has started long time ago, but the problem is not having a common language but what may happen if the control of that language is left in the wrong hands. Thanks to our rich languages we are able to express how we feel, what we do not like, what we do like, and our emotions, all sorts of things; and the reason why we can do that is because of the large amount of words every language has. But if we narrow our languages to one the person o persons that are in charge of the language will rule the world they would be able to control communication and how we communicate.

By giving this kind of power to a group of people, they can even control the way we think by narrowing every time more and more the language, making it impossible for later generations to think things they shouldn’t. Like the idea of a book called "1984 where there is control over the language and people’s will is manipulated and they do not have another choice but to follow., This is something that takes time ,but even this is something that has been used in wars, if you want a country to follow you, you just have to find the perfect type of language to speak to each social class, I say this because I firmly believe language is powerful when people know how to use it, it does not have to be spoken languages every time but it could be any kind of language, but the thing is that we need language, it doesn’t matter if its corporal, spoken, etc, and mostly we need a language that can fulfill what we need to express, and that’s why having a common language might become a problem. Finally I had liked to state that my position towards linguistic imperialism is not supportive, because I believe that we need a language diversity to prevent scenarios as the book’s "1984" and also because behind every language it doesn’t matter how insignificant it may seem has its own culture and identity.

CONCLUSION

According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) more or less the 50% of nowadays languages are endangered, and will probably disappear by the end of this century. Even if I repeat that astonishing fact some people would not realize what it really means to narrow the number of languages in the world, the extinction of a language is not just a language that’s lost but also the cultural wealth, ancestral knowledge and more importantly the identity of a community; that is the reason why I believe we must take care of the language diversity that we still have in the world, because with the extinction of languages we are losing a lot with their extinction. That’s why different policies have been created in different countries in order to protect those languages that are considered the minority among the others. Also, programs as UNESCO’s Endangered Languages Program were also created in order to support those minorities and preserve the linguistic diversity in the world so we don’t lose part of our roots every time one of those languages dies.

I must accept that finding a solution for this everyday growing issue is not easy because even if through policies there are opportunities to save some of the languages from being endangered there are others that may go extinct; however other ways to maintain those isolated languages is to inform people from their existence, because sometimes those languages are just forgotten in the media, for example in my country there are commercials in which it is shown the diversity and the small communities with their own languages that are found within my country, in my point of view is important to do this in order to inform people and show those small communities that they are taken into account. Finally I just have to say that fighting for the preservations of the languages is in order to preserve the cultural richness and diversity in the world.