errington getting language rights- the rhetorics of language endangerment and loss 2003

8/17/2019 Errington Getting Language Rights- The Rhetorics of Language Endangerment and Loss 2003

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J O S E P H E R R I N G T O N

G et ting Language Rights: The Rhetorics o f

Language E ndang erm ent and Loss

ABSTR AC T Endangerm ent loss death and related terms are increasingly familiar in descriptions

of

sociol inguist ic change now oc-

curring at an unp rece dente d scale because of forces of globa lization . They can serve bot h as names for shared con cerns of linguists a nd

anthropo logists, a nd as descriptions

of

otherwise different scenes

of

social encou nter, because they are subject

to

mu ltiple uses and

interpretations. This article focuses on tacit, enabling assumptions

of

three distinct strategies for framin g and redressing thr ea ts

to

marginal ized languages and speech com mun it ies. Recognit ion

of

their ide ological gro unds helps develop a sharper sense

of

their di f-

ferent uses, and the different social saliences that linguistic descriptions can have in and for marginalized communities. [Keywords: lin-

guistics, ideology, language change]

T

HIRTY YEARS AGO there was

a

parting

of

discipli-

nary ways between linguists, whose new formalisms

led them

to

Language

as a

universal object

of

study, and

cultural anthropologists, who became increasingly involved

in the politics

of

postcolonial representation. As increas-

ingly abstract models propelled linguists

in

the direction

of cognitive neuroscience, anthropologists were abandoning

the notion tha t culture could

be

conceptualized along

the lines

of

any sort

of

language-like system. But now,

as

hundreds

of

languages become marginalized, endangered,

and die around

the

world, globalization

is

casting

a

shadow over the science

of

language t ha t is hard even

for

the most theoretical and lab-oriented practitioners

of

this

science

to

ignore. This progressive d imi nishm ent

of

e m-

pirical resources

is

obliging linguists

to

think about lan-

guages not only as durable objects

of

descrip tion but also

as collective projects th at can be aban doned from one gen-

eration to th e nex t, like a sinking ship.

With

the

1992 publication

of a

group

of

articles

on

endangered languages

in

Language (Hale

et

al. 1992), this

problem came into open professional view,

at

least in the

United States. But since then, there

has

been little evi-

dence suggesting that linguists are thinking through

the

ways this rapid sort

of

language change is bound up w ith

broader issues of culture or identity. This article deals with

some

of

these larger questio ns as they have tacitly figured

in different framings

of

language endangerment,

and in

practical work aimed at redressing threats

to

m arginalized

communities of speakers.

These are situations

in

which linguists may find tha t

their objects

of

description

are

also objects

of

claims

to

rights,

and

that projects aimed

at

getting —that

is,

procuring—such rights

are

shaped

by

broader ways

of

getting —that is, understanding—what those rights are.

This can mean that their own descriptive interests, how-

ever sharply defined, cannot always be separate d easily

from

the

m ore diffuse values

of

those marginalized lan-

guages

for

their speakers. Nor can they be sure that their

work will circulate or be used

in

ways they might choose.

It

is

importan t, then,

for

linguists

to

be willing

to

recog-

nize the meanings and uses of their work outside the acad-

emy,

for

persons with othe r inve stm ents, direct

or

indi-

rect, in endang ered languages: speakers of these languages

and their descendants; officers

of

funding institutions,

governmental agencies,

and

nongo vernm ental organiza-

tions; writers

in

the p opular press; and so on.

In

all these

ways globalization is making old que stions ab out language

and culture new again, and also making

it

useful

for

lin-

guists

to

think about lessons that cultural anthropologists

have already learned about multiplying meanings and in-

terpretations

of

research and writing ou tside

an

academic

in-group.

Certainly there can be conceptual dissonance between

enabling premises

of

linguists' professional work

and

rhetorics that they can mount on behalf of endangered lan-

guages. A good example

can be

take n from

a

publicity

flyer circulated

by

the Endangered Language F ound ation

(discussed further below).

It

prom inently displays the as-

sertion by Steven Pinker, prominent cognitive neuroscientist

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST

105 4):723-732.

COPYRIGHT

© 2003,

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION


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7 4 Am erican An thr op olo gis t • Vol. 105, No. 4 • December 2003

and social Darwinist, that every time a language dies, we

lose thousands of unique insights, metaphors, and other

acts of gen ius (Endang ered Language Fund n.d.) Rhetori-

cally powerful appeals to meta pho rs and acts of genius

draw on relativist traditions of thought that animate some

of the work on endan gered languages I discuss below, and

that anthropologists may associate with the writings of

Edward Sapir. But that is a tradition that is very much at

odds with linker's own antirelativist approach to linguis-

tics.

It is a long way from his arguments about universal

mentalese (1994:59-64) to images of precious, language-

specific acts of gen ius, but he acco mplish es this shift

easily as he shifts audiences and purposes.

Questions of rhetoric like these may be hard to avoid

wh en endan gered languages become topical for non pro-

fessional audiences, which makes it worth co nsidering

here more specific questions about relations of the rheto-

ric and practice in the emerging linguistics of endangered

languages. To do so I suggest that we can usefully distin-

guish three broadly different ways of engaging the prob-

lem of language endangerment, each of which draws on a

distinct tradition of thought about language and involves

different strategies for redressing threats to languages.

Two of these are traditions of thought that help to

presen t languages as forms of life, and so play naturally

int o the specter of language de ath (e.g., Crystal 2000) or

ex tinc tion (e.g., Nettle and Rom aine 2000). But each in-

volves a different biological metaphor, associated with dis-

tinct purposes and different issues: One keys to value-

laden links between language and natural locales while

the other figures individual languages into a broad spec-

trum of quasi-natural diversity. Both may seem like intel-

lectual throwbacks for anthropologists, who have long

since jettisoned biological metaphors of culture, but it is

hard to deny their usefulness in this new field, because

they circulate easily across contexts, allow diffuse pro-

cesses to be concretized, and make generalizations easy to

draw across otherwise different situations. But their rhe-

torical strengths come at the cost of limited applicability,

which lends practical importance to a third notion of lan-

guage endangerment, the notion that language falls under

the broad purview of a contestable tradition of human

and social rights.

LANGUAGE A ND THE MA KIN G OF PLACE

Endangered languages have recently begun to figure into

the kinds of place-making strategies that Amy Muehle-

bach (2001) describes as having coalesced in the transna-

tional UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations in

1982.

These are activist efforts to mobilize indigenousness

as the basis of claims on behalf of communities whose

members count as inheritors and stewards of particular lo-

cales,

and not just citizens living on segments of national

territory. Aboriginally can be leveraged in this way into

claims of ownership, trumping rights of access that might

otherwise be claimed by and granted to encroac hing out-

siders. These are situation s in which languag es can take

on value if they are portrayed as organically bound up

with place and culture, and as likewise under threat of en-

croachment.

At the same time that languages can be value-laden

diacritics of local distinctiveness, their internal makeup—

specifically, their lexicons—can be portrayed as symbolic

embodiments of intimate, lived relations among speakers,

communities, and environments. When knowledge of

language is referred to a sense of place, these particulars of

language structure are most readily mobilized as the con-

crete evidenc e and bearer of alterna tive values and types

of being-in-the-w orld . . . [and] specific n otio ns of an in-

digenous morality (Muehlebach 2001:416).

Images of language as aboriginally embedded in a

nexus of place, morality, and community resonate clearly

with Romanticist traditions of political thought that have

been important in Europe at least since Johann Herder

(1772,

reprinted in 1966) propounded his organistic con-

ceptio n of language and cu lture in his Essay on the Ori-

gin of Langu age. Althou gh Herder himself was oriented

to the inadequacies of biblical accounts of human origins

and animated by a broad crisis of German national iden-

tity, themes that he developed in that essay and in his

later work have continued to shape the politics of ethnic

nationalism and language scholarship alike. In fact,

Herder can be identified as a founder of the relativist tradi-

tion of thought tacitly invoked by Pinker in the quotation

discussed above.

Organistic conceptions of language-in-nature figure

prominently, for instance, in self-descriptions of the lan-

guage activist group Terralingua, which closely parallel

those of other activist organizations devoted to the preser-

vation of endangered species. Terralingua's mission state-

ment (2003) describes endangered languages in terms that

recall the importance given to charismatic megafauna

(pandas, whales, and so on) in the prose of groups like the

World Wildlife Fund, in which they are made focal for the

work of preserving natural environments. It is this tacit

parallel that makes it rhetorically plausible for language

end ang erm ent to be represented as a third extinction cri-

sis

(Maffi 1999:21), after biodiversity and the erosion of

traditional cultures.

This broad rhetoric has specific practical implications,

insofar as it places greater symbolic weight on relatively

culturally salient lexicons, over and against phonological

and morphosyntactic systems, which are generally more

interesting for linguists. At the 1992 UN Conference on

Environment and Development, for instance, lexical sys-

tems were a recurring reference point for portrayals of lan-

guages as con cretiza tions of lived local know ledge, re-

positories of vast accumulations of traditional knowledge

and experience (Brundtland 1987:114). W hen lexicons

count as mirrors of nature and sedimentations of cultural

knowledge, loss of language can be seen as a harbinger not

just of language dea th but also of the extin ction of expe -

rience (Nabhan and St. Antoine 1993).


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Errington • Ge tting Language Rights 725

This image has a strong moral tenor that can be com-

plemented by appeals to lexicons' values as means of refer-

ence, which m ay only become ap parent in the future. By a

kind of linguistic taxol argu me nt, lexicons can be fig-

ured as relatively isolable information bases—in dictionar-

ies, encyclopedias, and so on—which are in danger of fall-

ing out of use before they are codified, or before the uses

of information they embody are discovered. When lexi-

cons become the focus of rhetorics of language death, eth-

noscience becomes new again, at least for nonanthro-

pological audiences.

A double linkage between words and place, both refer-

ential and existential, helps to motivate not only linkage

between communities and environments but also steps

that are taken to prevent language death throug h in situ

preservation:

There is a very close parallel between [ex situ] language

preservation and ex situ conservation in biology: while

both serve an important function, in both cases the eco-

logical context is ignored. Just as seed banks cannot pre-

serve a plant's biological ecology, ex situ linguistic docu-

mentation can not preserve a language's linguistic

ecology. [Maffi 1999:40]

This can be called a broadly localist framing of end an-

gered languages as embodiments of knowledge and iden-

tity—endowed with value that makes each a target of local

language activism aiming to redress outside threats.

This rheto ric is powerful in part because it keys so spe-

cifically to locales. For the same reason, it is relatively re-

stricted in applicability and more plausibly invoked for

languages with rich lexical resources, spoken in and about

relatively biodiverse environments, than others. It applies

less well to languages whose relatively limited lexical re-

sources might be a function of relatively nondiverse envi-

ronments in which they are spoken, perhaps because

speakers themselves have reduced local biodiversity in

course of subsistence activities (hunting, agriculture), pro-

duction of cash crops, and so on.

Localist rhetoric also keys crucially to a sense of inal-

ienable links between language and place, embodied and

mediated by indigenous communities of speakers. This

kind of nativism, entirely consistent with Herder's vision

of ethnolinguistic identity, is in fact written into the Draft

Universal D eclaration of Linguistic Rights of 1996, which I

discuss below. As Tove Skuttnab-Kangas (1999:50) notes,

that document contains relatively stronger claims for lan-

guage rights of mem bers of indigenous com mu nities,

over and against those accorded to languages spoken by

mem bers of mig rant grou ps. This very broad difference

can make for surprisingly fine distinctions, as can be

shown with one example taken from descriptions by Peter

Sercombe (2002, in press) of a Penan community in the

interior of Brunei, on the island of Borneo.

Pena n is com mo nly used to nam e groups of no-

madic forest dwellers and hunter-gatherers who live in

this part of the island as well as its eastern, Indonesian re-

gions. It also names the closely related native dialects, one

of which is spoken by members of a community that

sedentarized about forty years ago, in which Sercombe

spent time. Its youngest members continue to use the

Penan language among themselves, at least for the time

being, but these new residential patterns have led mem-

bers of that community to acquire one or two other lan-

guages (Malay and Dayak). This has also, Sercombe indi-

cates,

led to progressive loss of knowledge of Penan

ethnobotanical lexicons (2002:188-193). This can be seen

as a kind of linguistic correlate of a break with th e na tu-

ral environm ent, even though these people continue to

live in close prox imity to th e forest. By localist criteria like

those set out by Luisa Maffi (1999) and Skuttnab-Kangas

(1999), this partial dislocation would make it a less valu-

able target for efforts of revitalization, even if its speakers

may not be migrants in the usual sense or count as mem-

bers of a group rather than a com mu nity.

Localist rhetoric can invoke a quasi-purist sense of

boundedness in time as well as space, with collateral ef-

fects like those described by Renee Sylvain (2002) for the

indigenist claims to territorial sovereignty made by and

for the San people of South Africa, under the International

Labor Organization Convention of 1989. She shows how

such claims operate to perpetuate lines of cultural differ-

ence they presuppose, with a long-term collateral effect of

bracketing future San participation in a larger political

economy. Cultural rights that are linked to natural re-

source use key also to preservation of a way of life, such

that the more essentialized the 'cultural' features become,

the more they are seen as contrary to the historically tran-

sitory features of political ec on om y (2002:10 76). As with

culture, so with language: Sylvain's observations are easily

transposed to localist rhetorics of language rights, which

likewise make it easy to devalue or residualize language

change arising from extended conta ct with outside groups

and institutions.

Like the Romanticist tradition that it invokes, localist

rhetoric can be interpreted as involving totalistic linkage

between language and identity, a point that has emerged

as a leitmotif in criticisms of language activism made from

otherwise differing points of view. These include a kind of

loyal linguistic opposition (e.g., Ladefoged 1992; Mufwene

in press), cultural critics (e.g., Malik 2000), and more or

less eth no ce ntric ed itorialists such as Joh n Miller (2002).

In different ways these observers all argue that langu age

dea th is a misno mer for wha t is actually language shift,

the sort of cumulative process of language change that re-

sults from the self-interested, rational decisions that indi-

viduals make in the course of their lives, which happen to

include choices between and transmission of one language

rather than another. These arguments, founded on the

premise that speakers are autonomous, knowledgable so-

cial agents, can in turn be rebutted by calling into ques-

tion easy distinctions between self-interested choic e and

institutio nal coerc ion, especially in circumsUimvs of rapid

sociolinguistic change (e.g., Dorian 1993:575-579; Maffi

1999:37).


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7 6 Am erican An thr op olo gis t • Vo l. 105, No. 4 • December 2003

This debate is not easily resolved because it repro-

duces, in specific terms, much broader ideological differ-

ences,

whi ch I take up in discussion of ideas of lang uage

rights below. But first this organistic image of language en-

dangerment needs to be contrasted with another biologi-

cal metaphor, one that frames endangered languages

within the context of global diversity, rather than local

particularity.

VALUING LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY

Where localist rhetoric foregrounds unitary relations be-

tween threatened languages, cultures, and environments,

this second approach emphasizes the unity of all lan-

guages with each other as specific manifestations of uni-

versal human capacities. From this point of view the prop-

erties of languages take on importance and value in the

aggregate, so that what is threatened by the death of any

one language is the cumulative diversity of the whole.

This involves a broad com parative framing of languages as

tokens of a quasi-biological semiotic type, foregrounding

structural pro perties exhibited in data of language use over

the life of language in a community or environment. Far

from requiring in situ language preservation, it motivates

research rationales and descriptive techniques that make it

possible to alienate languages radically from interactional

contexts, natural environments, and communities.

This approach to language endangerment shows strong

continuity not just with received goals and methods of

contemporary linguistics, but with the 19th-century para-

digm of comparative philology, which can be sketched

here with reference to one of that discipline's major fig-

ures,

August Schleicher. Schleicher developed what are now

canonic styles for presenting structural evidence and his-

torical conclusions about the diversity-within-unity of In-

doeuropean languages, and about patterns of migration

that led to dispersion of speakers and the rise of language

difference. Contemporary proponents of work on endan-

gered language have now globalized this picture of the

past. In important comparative work like Johanna

Nichols ' s (1992) Linguistic D iversity in Space and Time, for

instance, typological and historical questions are brought

togethe r on a global basis, such that the study of genetic

diversity am ong m ore or less related languages can be in-

tegrated with a survey of structu ral diversity of configu-

ratio nal traits distri bute d across all languages. This is a

project whose scope is knowledge of language diversity on

a global scale, and so it confers value on endangered lan-

guages around the world.

Schleicher is also famous as the first linguist to trans-

pose Darwin's natural history of speciation to the study of

linguistic diversity (and using it to develop what now

seem egregious conclusions about subjugated peoples and

the fatedness of their languages to die). This broad linkage

continues to motivate writing about language death and

diversity—including, for example, The Rise an d Fall of

Lan-

guages, Robert Dixon's (1997) account of linguistic diversi-

fication that has explicit recourse to Stephen Gould's

punctuated equilibrium model of speciation. Conversely,

ecologists—for example, William Sutherland (2003)—see

the problems of endangered languages and species on a

global basis as broadly parallel, statistically relatable pro-

cesses. One need only understand languages to be differ-

entiable members of a species, or species of a genus, in-

stead of part of the fabric of shared experience in

communities of speakers.

Strategies of engagement motivated by comparativist

approaches to language endangerment differ considerably

from those sketched earlier, because they privilege the

gathering of data over the revitalizing of communities. So

in this field the problem of language death has led to a re-

finement in use of received field methods, as in Nikolaus

Himmelman's suggestion (1998), for instance, that two

distinct phases of research be recognized: comprehensive

documentation on the one hand and data assessment on

the other. The same co ncern with bodies of data is evident

in predictions by Douglas Whalen (in press)—professional

linguist and president of an academic-cum-activist organi-

zation, the Endangered Language Fund—that new infor-

mation about endangered languages will transform theo-

retical linguistics. This transformation will be aided by the

power of computer technology not only to aid the analysis

of data sets but also to make them highly portable via the

World Wide Web.

So, too, forward-looking linguists like Robert Dixon

(1997) and John McWhorter (2001:248)—who argue that

the study of at least one dying language should be a gen-

eral training requirement in the field—are oriented to

problems of language endangerment for the profession as

much or more than for communities of speakers. But it

does not follow that such work can be carried out with due

regard for interested observers, most particularly speakers

from whom linguists seek data. Jane Hill (2002) has rightly

called for recognition of the nonneutral values this work

involves and the collateral effects it can have for others.

Hill (2002:123-125) provides good grounds, for in-

stance, for being suspicious of the kinds of hype rbolic

valorization of diversity evident in Pinker's com m ent

quoted above or, to cite one of many other examples,

Leanne Hin ton's com m ent that the world stands to lose

an important part of the sum of human knowledge when-

ever a language stops being used (2001:5). This rhetoric

can be seen as mobilizing universal claims about the value

of languages in general to license claims of access to lan-

guages in particular, not just for the sake of their speakers

but for us, the world, or hum ani ty at large. Linguists

who seek to document global language diversity—what

the Endangered Language Fund's mission statement calls

the dissemination, to both the native communities and

the scholarly world, of the fruits of these efforts —are in

the first place aiming to appro priate local linguistic know l-

edge. This work can be self-interested in ways that may be

clearer to speakers of those endangered languages than to

outsiders whose interests may not even extend to the goal


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Errington • Getting Language Rights 7 7

of learning

to

speak them.

As

cases

in

point, Hill cites

speakers

of

Hopi

and

Cupeno whose felt rights

of

owner-

ship

of

their languages lead them

to

reject claims

of

access

by nonspeakers.

Linguists may choose to regard such cross-cultural dis-

agreements

as

rare

or

specious enough

to be

negligible,

but anthropologists should

be

more sensitive

to

parallels

between these sorts

of

encounters

and

claims centering

on

other natural resources. Appeals

to the

com mo n linguistic

heritage

of

humanity

can be

heard

as

resonating with

the

rhetoric

of the

com mo n natural heritage

of

humanity

which governments

and

NGOs have mobilized

to

license

interference

in

local community

and

prevention

of

their

access

to

natural resources. Those

who

would seek

to pre-

serve

or be

stewards

of

language diversity should keep

in

mind these (post)colonial precedents

for

their engage-

ments

as

outsiders with speakers

and

comm unities.

AUTHORIZING LANGUAGE RIGHTS

Localist

and

comparativist framings

of

endangered

lan-

guages,

as I

have sketched them here, involve tropes

of

language

as

life, which intim ate t hat thre ats

to

languages

are threats

to

preexisting, natural condition s.

A

third,

quite different sense

of

endangerment presupposes

lan-

guages

to be

possessions

of

speakers, rather than natural

phenomena. Under this profile, endangered languages'

values

are

linked

to

speakers' shared social biographies

and collective identities: They

are not

natural conditions

to

be

maintained

but,

rather, rights

to be

recognized

by

sources

of

political authority. Such claims

to

language

rights presuppose

and are

shaped

by

different understan d-

ings

of

such au thority, involving political

and

philosophi-

cal issues that

I can

broach here with

an eye to

just three

relatively narrow issues: (1) the kinds of legitimacy presup-

posed for, or attributed to, such au thority; (2) the scope of

claims that can be legitimately made; and (3) the shaping

effects of those claims on languages that are their objects.

The simplest, most powerful claims

to

language rights

are made

to and

motivated

by

God—the ultimate source

of authority

and

underwriter

of the

oldest

and

largest

or-

ganization devoted

to the

p reservation

of

endangered

lan-

guages.

For

members

of

this group,

the

Summer Institute

of Linguistics (SIL), respect

for

language rights

is a

piece

of

the mission

to

save souls,

as

Benjamin Elson's (2002)

Lin-

guistic Creed shows. Given that language is the most dis-

tinctly human and basic of God-given characteristics, El-

son asserts, all languages deserve equal respect and careful

study as part of the heritage of the hum an race. In this

way language rights

are

grounded

in

religious doxa that

can

be

universal

in

scope—keying

to

salvation through

di-

rect acquaintance with translatable scriptural truth—but

is

not universally accepted: What works

for the SIL

would

not work,

for,

say, proselytizers

for

Islam.

When Elson notes almost in passing that each lan-

guage

is

also deserving

of

being published,

he

recognizes

that these language rights are

in

fact bound

up

with

a dou-

ble mission

of

conversion—of pagan

to

Christian,

and

speech to text—for w hich prin t techno logy is crucial.

Rights

to

language

are

best respected when they

are re-

duced,

as an

expression prevalent

in the

colonial

era has

it,

to

writing. This

way of

figuring local languages

in

universal missions of conversion shows strong continuity

between

the

work

of the SIL and

earlier generations

of

missionaries.

In

fact, colonial history

(see, e.g.,

Harries

1988; Ranger 1989; Steedly 1996), suggests strongly that

a

by-product

of

work

by

missionaries

to

convert people

through their own languages was

the

creation

of

linguistic

hierarchies. These studies

and

others demon strate how

the

deployment of print technology has the collateral effect of

privileging some speech varieties relative

to

others

and,

perhaps, stimulating cumulative processes

of

shift from

less

to

more valuab le oral varieties.

The

moral

of

these

older stories, then,

is

that

SIL

m issionaries

are

obliged

to

define

the

languages

to

which speakers have rights.

Secular efforts

to

respect language rights involving

print technology

can

have similar hom ogeniz ing effects,

as shown

by the

case

of

linguistic work done

as

part

of a

development project among speakers

of the

little-studied

languages of Lombok, just east of Bali in Indonesia. These

languages have been described

as

comprising five

dia-

lects that are ordinarily lumped together und er

the

rubric

Sasak language (Indonesian: bahasa Sasak (Thoir

et al.

1985).

They actually con stitute

a

complex continuum that

ca n

be

broken down into

two

mutually unintelligible

groups. My

own

brief inquirie s suggest tha t speakers h ave

little sense of the nature or degree of variation that exists

in these forms

of

speech; Indonesian

is

known

by

some,

not all,

as the

second, national language.

In keeping with recent trends

in the

field

of

develop-

ment, employees

of a U.S. NGO

sought

to

implement

a

vaccination program against Hepatitis B

on

Lombok with

full respect

for the

rights

of

local people

as

active partici-

pants, in and through their own language. A linguist con-

sultant, Daniel Ajamiseba, w as brou ght

in as a

team

mem-

ber

to

help develop

a

sense

of

ownership

of

what

is

going

to

be

done

in and

through

the

project (1996:14).

His re-

search

led him to

select

one

dialect, w hat linguists have

come

to

call Ngeno ngene [rpnorpne],

as

mo st useful

for use

in

the

printed material

and

educational programs that

helped to implement the project around the island.

Though done

in the

name

of

local rights, this project

ac-

complished

a de

facto codification

of a

kind

of

protostan-

dard Sasak

by the

process Einar Haugen (1966) long

ago

described

as

selecting, codifying,

and

elaborating

a

dialect

into

a

language. Secular development, like religious

con-

version,

can

create hierarchies

of

language

(and,

perhaps,

speakers). Although these strategies m ight be suspect from

a radically localist point

of

view,

it is

hard

to

gainsay their

practical logic

if

they serve,

say, a

monolingual mother ' s

interests

in the

health

of her

children.

Steps taken

to

respect language rights

in

relatively

limited engagements with relatively homogeneous

com-

munities

may

seem

not

only morally legitimate

hut

also


6/10

728 American An thro po log ist • Vo l. 105, No. 4 • December 2003

highly practical. But more complex conditions of social

and linguistic pluralism raise difficult questions as to how

minority speakers' rights to native languages can be disag-

gregated from the sum total of civic rights and obligations

accruing to them, and all other speaker-citizens, in a

dem ocra tic society. This proble m is at the cen ter of a con-

siderable literature on language rights that is oriented not

to the extinc tion of languages as such but, instead, to

the loss of coherence of communities that are distin-

guished by the use of some native language. In these situ-

ations questions of language rights play directly into what

Cha rles Taylor calls the politics of reco gnitio n (1992).

According to Taylor, core values of democratic plural-

ism require that claims to cultural, religious, or linguistic

rights not be arbitrated on a demographic, political, or

economic basis. They must be articulated and accommo-

dated, he argues, within broader relations between state

institutions and minority communities, such that the le-

gitimacy of the former is recognized as being bound up

with reciprocal recognition of the latter's authentic (lin-

guistic) distinctiveness. This complementarity helps Tay-

lor to articulate his own position on the politics of Franco-

phone identity in Quebec and Canada, now further

comp licated by the new politics of identity involving C an-

ada's First Nations.

In these and other instances the politics of linguistic

rights can map onto, and coarticulate with, the politics of

territorial autonomy, but they take a different form when

claims are mounted on behalf of members of migrant

groups. Their native languages are doubly asymmetric

with one or more others that are spoken natively by domi-

nant segments of a national population and are also fo-

cally associated with rights and obligations of citizenship.

So it can be difficult to avoid or resolve a politics of lin-

guistic identity in linguistically plural democracies that, as

Seyla Benh abib observes, act in the nam e of universal

rights which are then circumscribed within a particular

civic com mu nity (2002:450). In these situations questions

of lang uage righ ts play ou t in tacit or official specification s

of institutional contexts in which they should be accom-

modated (schools, voting booths, motor vehicle depart-

ments, and so on).

I can only consider these culturally fraught issues of

scope here with an eye to the 1996 Draft Universal Decla-

ration of Linguistic Rights, discussed briefly above. This

document invokes the Universal Declaration on Human

Rights of 1948 and (at least implicitly) the French Declara-

tion of Human Rights in 1791 as general precedents for its

specific claim that all individuals are naturally endowed

with the capability to choose between languages, each for

herself or

himself,

as part of the good life. By foreground-

ing languages as possessions of individuals, this statement

brackets their collective nature as resources shared by

members of some collectivity. So, too, its universality keys

not to human capacities to acquire any natural language

but, instead , to ind ivid uals ' biographica l fated ness to ac-

quire some particular language from childhoo d, na-

tively, as a mem ber of a collectivity. The decla ration fur-

ther presupposes that languages can be objects of choice,

such that rights must be claimed for one that is in some

way counterposed to another, which is in some way su-

perordinate, dominant, or useful. And, finally, it predi-

cates rights of choice of autonomous, self-interested, and

rational agents who are capable of espousing one view or

other, adopting one course of action or other, and so on.

In effect, then, the universal declaration of human rights

distingu ishes betwe en two kinds of language de ath. Ille-

gitimate language shift is the causal outc om e of coercive

forces external to a minority community and needs to be

dist inguished f rom that ar ising f rom cumulat ive, self-

interested, knowledgeable choices by social agents be-

tween one language rather than another. It is this latter

scenario, centered on autonomous, rational decision-mak-

ing speakers, which Peter Ladefoged, Salikoko Mufwene,

and others invoke in their cautionary critiques of images

of language death.

But beyond its overt focus on individuals as speakers,

the universal document tacitly privileges collectivities of

speakers that can be identified by locality. This is because,

as also noted above, it accords greater strength to claims to

native languages for indigenous com mu nities than for

migra nt grou ps. In this way it appears to straddle two

views of language rights in relation to the good life. On

the one hand, its appeal to universal human capacities

elides quest ion s abou t social forces th at differentially af-

fect members of different generations, genders, classes,

and so on. On the other hand, it tacitly privileges place as

a criterion for identifying language communities without

specifying how to determ ine whe ther a do min ant lan-

guage is impose d or chose n, whe ther a local minor-

ity language is auth entic or limiting, and so on. In

this way the document's breadth allows for strategic invo-

cation in a variety of specific situations. It seems no coin-

cidence in this regard that the promulgation of the univer-

sal declaration was held in Catalonia, a region of Spain

where claims to linguistic and political autonomy are be-

ing mounted on the basis of shared historical experience

and territorial residence,

Whether the kinds of claims to language rights I have

discussed here are grounded in claims of faith or philoso-

phy, they are framed as being universal in scope. But that

does not mean they are accepted universally, as one can

see from an interesting parallel that developed during the

late 1970s and early 1980s between the so-called Asian

values controversy, and a language engineering project

undertaken by the city-state of Singapore. At that time,

Western doctrines of human rights came under broad, re-

lativist criticism from representatives of the Malaysian,

Singaporean, and Chinese governments, who portrayed it

as the thin ly disguised exte nsion of the soft power of

endu ring Euro-American imp erialism. (A con ven ient ex-

ample of this anti-Western critique is presented by the

Singaporean author Chee-Meow [1977].) Against the

Euroamerican tradition of the Enlightenment, these critics


7/10

Errington • Getting Language Rights 7 9

pitted

a no

less reified Asian tradit ion

of

rights, taken

to

accrue

to

collectives—family, co m m un ity, state—of w hich

individuals

are

first

and

foremost members. Languages,

subsistent

as

they

are on

collectivities

of

speakers,

are

readily appropriated

to

this logic,

a

fact th at can legitimize

roles assumed

by

states

as

arbiters

of

their values

and

asso-

ciated identities.

Around

the

same time,

in

1979,

the

city-state

of Sin-

gapore was embarking

on its

Speak Man darin campa ign.

Fifteen years later,

as

research

by

Christina Hvitfeldt

and

Gloria Poedjosoedarmo (1998) shows,

the

program

had al-

ready shown considerable success

in

inducing Singapor-

eans descended from southern Chinese migrants

to

aban-

don their native dialects —H okkien, Hakka, Fujianese,

an d

so

on—for M andarin. Two contingencies contributed

to that success: Mandarin's orthographic privilege over

these non mu tually intelligible dialects

and the

specter

the Singapore government held

out

tha t local Singa-

porean Chinese identity

was

threatened with fragmenta-

tion

in

the face

of

the rise

of

English as the city-state's ling ua

franca.

But

this language engine ering cam paign

had an-

other collateral effect:

It

produced

a

communi ty

of

speak-

ers

of the

dominant language

in the

People's Republic

of

China,

a

long-term target

of

trade

and

economic coopera-

tion.

The

success

of the

Speak Mandarin campaign

can be

read, then,

as

symptomatic

of the

legitimacy that citizens

accorded

to

claims made

on

them

by the

state,

in the

name

of

the collective.

The last important issue

I

must note here involves

a

return

to

linkage between language rights

and

print liter-

acy,

a

technology that requires

not

only selection

of

speech varieties

for

which rights

are

recognized

but

also

deselection

of

others that

are not.

Because langu age

fig-

ures

as an

unanalyzed notion

in the

universal declaration,

the document must remain vague with respect

to the

poli-

tics

of

choice among varieties, which must

be

made

in or-

der that claims

to any

language rights

may be

redressed.

The larger social

and

cultural importance

of

such choices

can

be

illustrated here with another example from Indo-

nesia, whose national constitution explicitly guarantees

citizens' rights

to

speak their native languages

in

addition

to

the

nationa l language.

Because

the

constitution (like

the

universal declara-

tion) does

not

specify

how

those rights accrue

to

different

forms

of a

single language,

it did not

prevent

the

state

functionaries from arriving

at a

curious

way of

preserving

the rights

of

the nation's d om inant ethnic group, the Java-

nese, to

their own language.

In the

1980s state functionar-

ies publicized worries that Javanese, well known

for its

elaborate stylistic variants, was becom ing corrupt

and los-

ing ground

to

Indonesian.

As a

result

the

Department

of

Education made

it a

subject

of

instruction

in

national

schools

in

predominantly ethnic Javanese areas.

But the

variety selected

for

such treatment

was

just tha t refined,

restricted variety that

was

emblematic

of an

imagined

courtly past, never widely known among Javanese

at

large.

On

the

face

of

things,

the

state's respect

for

speakers'

rights to their native language led to a linguistic museumi-

fication that

had the

collateral effect

of

devaluating every-

day kinds

of

speech (Errington 1996).

These

and

other ambiguities give

the

universal decla-

ration

of

language rights

its

tremendous scope

but

also

make

it, in the

words

of

one UNESCO witness

to its

prom-

ulgation,

a

linguistic time bo mb (Gatera 1998). W hethe r

or

not its

rhetorical sweep gives

it

practical purchase

on

any particular situation,

it has

been useful here

as a

way

to

survey

the

comp lex presuppo sitions involved

in

efforts

to

redress threats not only to languages but also to language

rights, because they refer

to

questions

of

social authority

on

the one

hand

and the

politics

of

linguistic identity

on

the other.

CONCLU SION: THE POLITICS OF LINGUISTIC

REPRESENTATION

I have juxtaposed

in

quick succession three different senses

of language chan ge that

are

presupposed

to be

part

of

th e

bad

consequences

of

rapid social change: language

death, language endangerment,

and

loss

of

language rights.

The result

is a

m ultiplicity

of

images that might lend

rhe-

torical force

to

claims ab out

the

values

of

endangered

lan-

guages. Languages

are

seen

as

m irrors

of

nature

or

unique

formal systems, instruments

of

thought

or

bodies

of

iden-

tity, objects

of

inalienable rights

or

situated resources,

etc.

Each image derives rhetorical strength from cultural

and

political traditions that

it

respecifies

and

recycles,

in

this

way tacitly helping represent

the

shape

of

social change

and possible futures of marginalized c omm unities.

But beyond such rhetorical considerations,

the

core

work

of

linguists—to metalinguistically objectify languages

as lexicons, sound systems, and grammatical systems—

remains mute with respect

to the

ways speakers en gage,

re-

sist, or exploit social change, for better or worse. The gap

between abstract language structures

and

social life will

seem barely reducible

as

long

as one

perceives

the

former

as having what William Sewell calls

the

most modest

re-

source effects (1992:23 )

of any

aspect

of

social life.

By

this

he

means that patterns

of

sound

and

grammar have

little purchase

on the

social dynamics

in

which agents

construe contexts

and

mobilize resources (material

and

symbolic)

for

particular purposes . Sewell suggests th at

the

neutrality

of

language systems with respect

to

dynamics

of

power

is

evident

in

their relative durability over time:

They

are the

most stable

of all

structured aspects

of

social

life.

But

this

is an

observation that

can be

phra sed differ-

ently, with

an eye to

questions

of

sociolinguistic change

and language endangerment,

to

suggest

a

different con clu-

sion: If those structures are among the clearest traces of

the past

in the

present,

and

also

are

embodied

in

that part

of social practice which is talk, then they are available for

mobilization

in the

service

of

larger claim s

on the

past

as a

scarce resource (Appadurai 1981).

In fact, different visions

of the

past inform each

of the

three strategies

I

sketched above

tor

valorizing endan gered


8/10

730 American An throp olog ist • Vol. 105, No. 4 • December 2003

languages , which invoke lived con tinuity between pre-

sent conditions and an environment that was once pris-

tine but is now threatened, migrations by ancestor-speak-

ers in recent or distant history, originary acts of creation

by God, and so on. Nor are these the only ways that the

durability of language structure can take on v alue as a

symbolic resource. In Imagined Comm unities, for instance,

Benedict Anderson (1991) makes broadly similar argu-

ments by identifying languages as crucial sources of conti-

nuity with indefinitely deep national pasts, and of frater-

nity among members of an imagined community in the

present. Although the rest of his argument centers on just

those technologies and ideologies that now seem to be

causing death and endangerment of nonnational lan-

guages around the world, it also points to the possibility

that language might be a focal resource in alternative

forms of invented traditions, grounded in communities of

discursive practice (M cConnell-Ginet and Eckert 1992).

From this point of view, the work of linguists might

be put to service as a means for invoking the past in the

present, such that recognition of local dialects or lan-

guages can be presented as valid sym bolic substrates for

collective identities and legitimate instruments of collec-

tive agency. To be sure, linguistic expertise itself has little

purchase on these possibilities and cannot make descrip-

tive work speak to any particular historical and cultural

circumstance. So, for instance, linguists can demonstrate

the empirical gaps between reality and a do m inan t com-

pla int trad itio n of English (Milroy and Milroy 1999) but

can claim no privilege for those findings in public dis-

course. And when controversy coalesces around marginal

dialects like African American Vernacular English (Ebon-

ics), the expert testimony of linguists might sway a judge

in a court of law but has no place in the court of public

opinion (Labov 1998).

But in communities that are marginal not only to

dominant languages but also to dominant language ide-

ologies, it may be that there are grounds for recognizing or

augmenting alternative linguistic traditions through lin-

guistic descriptions. It may also be that such alternative

traditions can develop independently of linguistic descrip-

tions or even technologies of literacy. Performative linguistic

norms, for instance, have proven an effective means of re-

sisting outside social forces for 300 years among the Tewa,

a Pueblo Indian group that has maintained its language as

a minority within a minority. Ancestors of those now living

on the easternmost of the Hopi mesas removed themselves

from Spanish influence in 1

700,

and their descendants

continue to use an indigenous Kiowa-Tanoan language in

bilingual and trilingual language repertoires.

Notwithstanding this double marginality the Tewa ap-

pear, in Paul Kroskrity's (1998:104) words, to be paragons of

linguistic conservatism, thanks to ritual continuity in the

gendered, exemplary space of the kiva. Here purism is em-

bodied in performative connections with the past, rather

than made the object of normative structural descriptions.

Notwithstanding inadvertent osmosis of foreign words into

these compartmentalized performances, a linguistic sense

of tradition and identity can key, as linguists would ex-

pect, to grammatical and phonological elements of kiva

talk, which represent the most stable embodiments of the

past in the present, enhancing its distinctiveness and

authenticity for the community at large.

This appears to be a situation in which the work of

linguistic description has little purchase on community

integrity. But this may not be true of others that have al-

ready engaged with techniques and products of literacy,

along with encroaching institutions, ideologies, and lan-

guages. One such community is on Rapa Nui (Easter Is-

land),

off the coast of Chile. It was initially se ttled by Poly-

nesians; however, their descendants were kidnapped by

Blackbirders in the 1860s, displaced from large tracts of

land by colonialists in the 1870s, and decimated by illness

from the very onset of contact with Europeans. Massive

outside influence broke down old clan structures by the

time the Chilean navy took control in 1953; and Spanish,

language of the nation-state, was in increasingly common

use by Rapa Nui natives, who were reduced in numbers to

less than 1,000, many of whom were migrating to the

mainland with increasing frequency.

On the face of things, Rapa Nui is a prototypically

moribund language that has undergone enormous gram-

matical simplification and relexification as a result of con-

tact with Spanish (Makihara 2001). But in the last two dec-

ades,

the situation on the island has changed in ways that

are giving it new value and new life. As more tourists have

been attracted to the island's famous archeological rem-

nants, the land has taken on value beyond its use as pas-

turage for sheep. Locals (mostly wom en) are exploiting

economic opportunities offered by tourism, which are not

directly dependent on mainland institutions. At the same

time,

new laws have modified the Chilean state's asym-

metric power relations not only with ethn ic mino rities

on the mainland but also on Rapa Nui. The upshot is that

new claims can be made for local rights to newly valuable

land.

These claims are now being asserted in a new sort of

local public sphere, a scene of articulation of representa-

tive democratic politics in a new sort of Rapa Nui lan-

guage. Since 1988, when an improvised Counc il of Elders be-

gan to assert local rights of control to the entire island, a

massively Hispanicized genre of Rapa Nui—structurally

impure by historical standards, but socially distinctive in

local contexts—has become appropriate for oratory, help-

ing to mark speakers' local allegiances and to distinguish

its audience. As Sarah Thomason and Terence Kaufman

suggest, a language like Rapa Nui can only survive through

syncretic, heavy structural borrow ing (1988:91-95 ), no t

just of lexical items but also of syntactic and phonological

elements from the dominant language. This process has

given rise to an impure but authentic language that em-

bodies a prenational past and identities shared with in-

digenous ancestors. In the absence of external national

and global forces, the new Rapa Nui language might be a


9/10

Errington • Getting Language Rights 731

collective project that would collapse, as did Mexicano

(Hill and Hill 1986). But an appropriate constellation of

political and economic contingencies has given relatively

durable

;

socially distinctive features of talk on Rapa Nui

new importance for a new linguistic tradition and place-

making project.

In this and other situations, the survival of endan-

gered languages is bound up with technologies and politics

of literacy, as Hinton and Kenneth Hale's (2001) survey of

language revitalization efforts shows. So, too, these are

contexts in which the work of linguists to make distinctive

forms of speech writable may help to mobilize linguistic

traces of the past in the present. Thus, linguists contribute

to linguistic traditions that may be invented, but are none-

theless authentic, and so much more than merely false

construal[s] [of the past] whose object is political in na-

ture (Friedman 1993:745). Descriptive work that serves to

redress threats to languages may be strategic and rhetorically

keyed but can also help frame and answer politically

fraught questions

of

identity. Linguists can then contrib-

ute to the preservation of senses of community if they

share with others a heightened sense of the larger stakes

involved in the politics of writing and of endangered lan-

guages.

JOSEPH ERRINGTON Department of Anthropology, Yale Uni-

versity, New Haven, CT 06520

NOTES

Acknowledgments. In addition to other participants in the panel in

which

the

first version

of

this article was read,

my

thanks

go to

Doug Whalen and Peter Sercombe for discussion and material not

yet published, and

to

Asif Agha, Greg Urban, and Jo nat han Amith

for valuable discussion of these issues.

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