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Summary1. Introduction
2.
Diversity and intercommunication: addressing language contact using the 'complexity'
perspective
3. Language
contact, equilibrium and shift
4. New principles
for a new historical era
5. Immediate
priorities for the general maintenance of linguistic diversity
6. Synthesis and
conclusion: some principles and values for peace and linguistic justice throughout the
planet
1. Introduction (1)
The group of processes referred to
as 'globalization' or 'internationalization', are constructing a new sociolinguistic
situation, at least for the most economically - and technologically - advanced areas of
the planet, that we need to explore and understand fully if we want to be able to control
its effects and shape its development.
The linguistic
consequences of this phenomenon are caused mainly by the sharp increase in the
transnationalization of economies (with a trend towards global free trade and the
foundation of large corporations through mergers and take-overs), and by developments in
communication technologies.
In the first instance, we see how
extending traditional market boundaries produces the need to learn new languages to enable
negotiations with new suppliers and potential buyers. Furthermore, as national firms are
taken over by multi-national corporations and factories belonging to the latter are set up
in new territories, the need arises for staff (especially highly-qualified staff and those
holding intermediate and management positions) to know and possess everyday usage of
languages other than those of their traditional communities. This series of economic
factors then, tends to produce changes in the linguistic competences required
professionally and, hence, in the 'language of work' factor which can, as we know, have a
profound influence, in specific contexts, on the stability or abandonment of the languages
of human groups.
In the second
instance developments in communication technologies the Internet phenomenon,
particularly in the First World, has enabled people to access to web contents
and contact with each other on a daily basis over long distances, thus breaking the limits
of physical proximity. Nowadays, large numbers of people communicate electronically with
others who live many kilometres away and whose first language can be one of a range of
different codes. Moreover, communication satellites make it increasingly possible to
receive broadcasts produced at great distances from the point of reception and, hence, in
languages other than those of the traditional community.
We are also seeing a number of
actions, largely in response to these changes, in the political organization of
significant parts of mankind, particularly on a continental level. In Europe then, a
process of financial, political and cultural integration is underway. This process
requires solutions to problems caused by the creation of a large area of fluid
interrelation between a large number of human groups that speak different languages.
The
traditional areas of human communication and interrelations are therefore undergoing a
substantial growth. Up until now, these areas had guaranteed the preservation of a certain
historical status quo which, at least for those groups able to retain their
political autonomy, had been able to keep individuals and societies in a certain
functional monolingualism.
The expansion in areas of human
interrelation (mainly economic and technological), is giving rise to an important
phenomenon of the bilingualization or functional polyglottization of many individuals.
This is due to the linguistic demands of the new situation and the fact that more and more
people see advantages in possessing multiple linguistic competences. A novelty of
this process is that the knowledge of more than one language or having to use these with
different interlocutors or for different functions (an issue previously affecting only
elite groups or minoritized or small linguistic groups) is now an increasingly everyday
phenomenon for many individuals from larger and/or majority linguistic groups within their
states.
This extended language contact and
the polyglottal needs of more and more members of human groups that were, up until now,
non-minority (in the traditional sense of the word), are generating feelings of cultural
threat and defensive reactions, previously only experienced by groups habitually
minoritized through political integration without official and public recognition.
Although these feelings of linguistic insecurity and threat may be exaggerated in most
cases, this effect of globalization could be a good starting point for a serious review of
the foundations of the linguistic organization of mankind as a whole. Now that this sense
of feeling threatened is not exclusive to politically-subordinated groups, now that it
encompasses those that are beginning to suffer from the (inter)dependence of economies,
technology and the mass media, it should be used to increase understanding of the
classical situation of minoritization by larger, minoritizing groups. We may well be on
the threshold of a new era in history where linguistic fraternity and intercomprehension
between the different human groups can progress and give rise to new, fairer principles of
political and linguistic organisation than those in place previously.
One extremely important issue that
arises from increased contact and interrelations is how we humans can come to understand
each other, regardless of the linguistic group that we come from. Since the scale of
normal communication is expanding from being merely state and regional to become
continental and even planetwide, is it not about time that mankind started to think about
how to resolve the issue of communication between the species as a whole? |