Hieber, Daniel W. 2012. The politically incorrect guide to language death. Invited guest lecture, Anthropology 305: ‘Language & Culture’, Professor Amy L. Paugh, Department of Anthropology, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA, Nov. 11, 2012.

Disclaimer:

There’s actually nothing offensive or politically

incorrect about this presentation.

How boring.2

Overview

1. The standard story

2. Question the received wisdom

3. Reach the same conclusions

Why bother with this exercise?

0 Conclusion: Language shift is complicated. Overly simplistic representations don’t give us the insights we need to address the issue.

3

The Received Story

4

0 Originally 10,000 languages4

0 6,909 living languages left10

0 50% - 90% of those will go extinct by 210014, 7

0 (Some) causes:0 Globalization

0 Technology

0 Overt political repression

0 Cultural dominance

Responses:0

Document them before 0

they die out

Revitalization and 0

reclamation programs

Government support for 0

endangered languages

5

839%

7739%

30416%

8955%

1,8241%

2,0140%

1,0380%

3390%

1330%

Languages as % of World Population10

100,000,000 to 999,999,999

0%

10,000,000 to 99,99

9,9991%

1,000,000to 9,999,

9995%

100,000 to 999,999

13%

10,000 to99,999

28%1,000 to 9

,99930%

100 to 999

16%

10 to 995%

1 to 92%

Languages by Speaker Population10

Endangered Languages3

3,167 currently endangered

6

Language Vitality9

7

4%9%

10%

10%

11%

57%

Extinct since 1950

Severely endangered

Critically endangered

Vulnerable

Definitely endangered

Safe or data-deficient

Language Vitality9

8

4%9%

10%

10%

11%???Safe

???Data-deficient

Extinct since 1950

Severely endangered

Critically endangered

Vulnerable

Definitely endangered

Safe

Data-deficient

Why worry about language death?

0 Value to linguistic science

0 Irreplacable cultural heritage

0 Loss of indigenous knowledge about the world

0 Loss of indigenous perspectives on the world

0 Loss of cultural identity

0 Concommitant decline in biodiversity

0 Language as a human right

0 Benefits of mother tongue education and bilingualism

0 Language death is happening faster now than before

9

A Closer Look at Language Death

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

~ Mark Twain

10

The Original Languagesante 8,000 BC

0 Neolithic population estimate: 10 million9

0 Hunter-gathering can only support small communities

0 Constant fracturing of groups into new branches

0 Each group speaks a slightly different language variety

0 Received wisdom:

0 < ~500 – 1,000 speakers per language7

0 ~ 5,000 – 20,000 languages as of 10,000 y.a.

11

12NSW Department of Education and Communities:http://www.curriculumsupport.education.nsw.gov.au/shared/abmaps/nations.htm

0 Question: Languages or dialect continuum?

0 Question: Can we meaningfully compare language statistics from today to the Paleolithic?

13

The Agrarian Revolution8,000 – 5,000 BC

Sedentary lifestyle supports larger communities0

Languages grow and crowd each other out / absorb 0

other speaker communities

Received wisdom:0

Languages have been continuously on the decline0

Decrease in # of languages offset by population 0

explosion7

Earliest instance of urbanization0

Renfew0 -Bellwood Effect – decrease in deep-level diversity, i.e. the number of language families7

14

0 Question: Is language death a modern phenomenon?

0 Question: Are the causes of language death today compared to in early history different in kind or simply degree? Is language death today a fundamentally different phenomenon?

15

Counting Languages

16

0 What’s a language?

0 Mutual intelligibilityL1

L2

L3

L4

L5

Dialect chain

Counting Languages

17

0 What’s a language?

0 Mutual intelligibilityL1

L2

L3

L4

L5

Counting Languages

18

0 What’s a language?

0 Mutual intelligibility

0 Politics

0 Chinese

0 Serbo-Croation

0 Language attitudes

0 Scandanavian languages

L1

L2

L3

L4

L5

L3 = L1 or L2?

Counting Languages

19

What0 ’s a speaker?Cultural knowledge = 0

linguistic knowledgeDo younger speakers 0

count?

Knowledge of quotes, 0

proverbs

Do outsiders count?0

Linguists?0

Non0 -ethnic community members?

0 Are the numbers accurate?5

0 Self-reporting

0 Out-of-date data

0 Under-reporting

0 Australian Native Title1

0 Over-reporting

0 A few phrases = speaker

Ecological Metaphors

20

0 Originally 10,000 languages

0 6,909 living languages left

0 50% - 90% of those will go extinct by 2100

0 (Some) causes:

0 Globalization

0 Technology

0 Overt political repression

0 Cultural dominance

0 Responses:

0 Document them before they die out

0 Revitalization and reclamation programs

0 Government support for endangered languages

Ecological Metaphors

0 Language death / extinction

0 Competition

0 Language ecologies

0 Preservation / revitalization

0 Question: Are languages like organisms? How so? Why not?

0 Question: Which of these metaphors are useful? In what ways?

21

Language & Ecology

0 Clear correlation between linguistic and biological diversity16

0 Language ecology – relationship between languages and the people who speak them5, 6

0 Strong version – theory of language competition13

0 Ecolinguistics – branch of language ecology5

0 Discounts notion of competition

0 Focus on connection between language and their ‘habitat’ or social, political, and economic contexts

22

23

0 Question: Are the causes of language death and biological extinction the same?

0 Question: Are the metaphors of language competition and ecologies useful? Or do they obscure the issues?

0 Question: Do languages compete/die/have habitats, or do speakers, or both?

0 Question: What terminology could we use that might more accurately represent these phenomena?

0 Question: Do you think any of the terminology we’ve discussed is offensive or denigrating?

24

0 Question: Languages naturally change and differentiate from each other over time. Is the rate of linguistic diversification equal to the rate of language shift / death?

0 Question: Should we distinguish different types of diversity? What types?

0 Question: Will dying languages be replaced by new ones? Will the rate of replacement equal the rate of extinction?

25

Language Birth

26

0 Pidgins and creoles

0 Revitalized languages

0 Linguistic diversification

0 Latin > Spanish, Catalan, Corsican, French, Italian, Galician, Mozarabic, Occitan, Portugese, Romansh

0 Regular processes of historical change

Chinglish0 (China)Singlish0 (Singapore)Sheng (Nairobi)0

Portu0 nol (Brazil)

Nubi0 (Arabic: Kenya)Afrikaans (S. Africa)0

Gullah (S.E. U.S. coast)0

Krio0 (Sierra Leone)Kreyol0 (Liberia)Haitian Creole (Haiti)0

Patwa0 (Dominica)Ladino (Judeo0 -Spanish)

Hunting for the Roots of the Language Shift

0 Question: How true are the following statements?0 ‘Indigenous languages are dying because they can’t

express concepts needed for the modern world.’

0 ‘Indigenous languages are dying because they’re some of the most complex and hardest to learn.’

0 Question: What is globalization?0 Is globalization a cause or a result of language shift, or

both?

0 How can globalization actually support linguistic diversity?

27

Overt and Covert Causes

28

0 Natural catastrophes

0 War and genocide

0 Language policy

0 Compulsory education

0 Linguistic nationalism

0 Economic conditions

0 Political autonomy

0 Language attitudes and associations

0 Revitalization efforts?

0 Technology?

Question0 : How is language shift in autochthonous communities similar or different to language shift in immigrant communities?

Question: Which is more important for understanding 0

language shift – the language a person speaks, or the language they teach their children?

29

How should we respond?

30

0 “Let them die in peace.”11

0 “It is paternalistic of linguists to assume that they know what is best for the community.”8

0 “Patwa is keeping back the children.”15

0 “it is most urgent to document languages before they disappear”7

0 “our global village must be truly multicultural and multilingual, or it will not exist at all.”14

0 “Language death is a terrible loss, to all who come into contact with it”5

Subjectivity and Language

0 Question: Is the value of language objective or subjective? (Note: subjective ≠ arbitrary)

0 Question: Are languages mutually exclusive? Are they even in direct competition?

31

Conclusion

0 Language endangerment is complicated.0 (Sorry if you were hoping for a straightforward

conclusion.)

0 Overly simplistic representations don’t give us the insights we need to actually address the issue.

0 A great deal more research needs to be done in understanding the precise causes of language shift, so that communities can best address this phenomenon in the way that is most appropriate for them.

32

Contact Information

Daniel W. Hieber

Rosetta Stone

dhieber@rosettastone.com

Slides and other presentations available on website:

www.danielhieber.com

33

Further Reading

EndangeredLanguages.com0

Dying Words0 by Nicholas Evans

When Languages Die0 by K. David Harrison

0 ‘Why do languages die?’ by Daniel W. Hieber

34

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Hawaii at Manoa. http://www.endangeredlanguages.com4. Evans, Nicholas. 2010. Dying Words: Endangered Languages and What They Have to Tell Us. Wiley-

Blackwell.5. Grenoble, Lenore A. 2011. Language ecology and endangerment. In Peter K. Austin & Julia Sallabank

(eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Endangered Languages. 27-45. Cambridge University Press.6. Haugen, Einar. 1972. The Ecology of Language: Essays by Einar Haugen. Stanford University Press.7. Krauss, Michael E. 1992. The world’s languages in crisis. Language 68(1): 4-10.8. Ladefoged, Peter. 1992. Another view of endangered languages. Language 68(4): 809-811.9. Lee, R. B. & I. DeVore (eds.). 1968. Man the Hunter. Aldine.10. Lewis, M. Paul (ed.), 2009. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 16th edn. SIL International. Online

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version: http://www.unesco.org/culture/languages-atlas/en/atlasmap.html13. Mufwene, Salikoko S. 2001. The Ecology of Language Evolution (Cambridge Approaches to Language

Contact). Cambridge University Press.14. Nettle, Daniel & Suzanne Romaine. 2000. Vanishing Voices: The Extinction of the World’s Languages.

Oxford University Press.15. Paugh, Amy L. 2012. Playing with Languages: Children and Change in a Caribbean Village. Berghahn

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Nature 423: 276-9.35