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Towards a philosophy of language diversity
David Crystal
Paper prepared for 'Dialogue of Cultures', Reykjavik, 14/15 April 2005, in honour of Vigdis Finbogadottir
Coincidences. Mathematicians who deal in probability theory are in no doubt about it. Coincidences happen all the time, and it doesn't take much to encounter one. Take birthdays. We are here to celebrate Vigdis's 75th birthday, April 15th. How many people do we need to gather together before we will find two sharing the same birthday? Popular intuition suggests 367 people (to allow for leap years). But if you want more than a 50/50 chance of this happening, the mathematicians have established that you need only 23. Today, we have 200 people in this room. On that basis we should easily have another claimant to the day. {But, as it transpired, there was no-one: the theory evidently may need more work!] The significance of events is sometimes reinforced by coincidences. Is it a coincidence that we have here a former president born on 15 April? Not if we examine the records, and find that on that day were also born Suleiman 11the Ottoman Emperor, Catherine I Empress of Russia, and Bessie Smith known as 'Empress of the Blues'. You are beginning, I trust, to see a pattern? And then we find the day also shared by Leonardo da Vinci, novelist Henry James, and actress Emma Thompson - obviously a good day for the arts and for anyone who might have ended up, once upon a time, as a theatre director. But, to avoid any sin of pride, we should note that April 15 has had its share of gloom. It was the day on which Abraham Lincoln was assassinated and the day the Titanic sank. It is also the day by which Americans have to have filed their tax returns. And it is the day on which the first Disneyland opened and, some years later, the first Macdonalds restaurant. Which leads me - in case you were wondering would I ever get there - to our conference, for if Disney and Macdonalds do not have iconic status, in relation to the theme of globalization and language diversity, then nothing does. We are here as part of a dialogue of cultures, and our aim (as stated in the preliminary literature) is 'to discuss cultural and linguistic diversity and its economic, political, social, cultural, and technological ramifications'. Specifically, in a workshop (I quote again from preliminary statements) we will be discussing 'the impact of globalization on minority languages and how modern technology can be a tool in documenting these languages and in spreading awareness about them'. From these formulations, I deduce that this is to be a conference about means and achievements and tasks still to be done, not about the underlying principles involved. The organizers, quite rightly, have assumed that every participant would take it as axiomatic that cultural and linguistic diversity is a basic human 'good'. Although there are many settings where that principle still requires exposition and defence, this conference is not one of them. Similarly, from the way the word 'globalization' has been singled out, the organizers have taken it for granted - again, quite rightly - that we are ready to assign that phenomenon a special causative role in relation to our problem. But where do we go from here? We are asked to consider the 'economic, political, social, cultural, and technological ramifications'. How exactly do we set about doing this? To begin with, we need to add an extra word to this list of ramifications: linguistic. There are linguistic ramifications too, and it is surprising, given the subject-matter, how often these are neglected. We are aware of the political and economic arguments in relation to diversity - they have been repeatedly rehearsed. We are aware of the social and cultural values which language diversity represents - books have been written about these. And we are beginning to be aware of the role of technology in fostering these values. But underneath all these concerns is - language. And we need to ask: what are the chief linguistic factors fostering or impeding an outcome of maintained language diversity, and how should these be
evaluated? If a comparison of other subjects, such as science and religion, is anything to go by, a systematic discussion of these factors requires an appropriately developed philosophy - in our case a philosophy of language management. I use the term 'language management' to include all the principles and procedures we need to have in place in order to look after a language or languages, within and across communities. The data which would inform a theory of language management come from several sources, such as language policy and planning, language teaching and learning, multilingual ism, and sociolinguistics. Falling centrally within its remit is language diversity and its various tasks - to document, to vitalize (and, where practicable, revitalize), and to publicize. But so do many other concerns, which at first glance seem to be little connected with what we are here to talk about, such as local interest in a language's accents and dialects, concerns about clarity of expression (as in Plain English campaigns, or debate about the accessibility of the language of science), purist anxieties about language change, public concern over the maintenance of linguistic standards, and questions about the relationship between language and literature. At present, each of these topics is the focus of very different professions, journals, societies, and interests. Language and literature, for example, are usually taught in totally different university departments. In schools, there is usually little connection between what goes on in the Modern Languages department and what goes on in the department which teaches children oracy and literacy in their mother-tongue. I want to argue that there is an urgent need to integrate these many domains of linguistic concern, and this is what a philosophy of language management will have to do. And this integration is especially important, in my view, in relation to the topic of this conference. For I believe the biggest danger to the long-term maintenance of endangered and minority languages comes not from globalization and the other causative factors which have been recognized in the language diversity literature, such as those (like disease and genocide) which threaten the survival of a community. These are external factors which initiate the process of endangerment. Once these factors are underway, we know what we have to do: because we find it impossible to stop them, in the short term, we put initiatives in place to minimise their influence - in a word, we try to manage them. Many of you spend a significant part of your lives managing the impact of external factors. But there are internal factors also, and these are the neglected ones - factors arising out of the very nature of the languages we are trying to protect, which also have to be recognized and managed, and which, if we do not, can lead quickly and inevitably to the failure of our earlier initiatives. In a phrase: the dangers facing the language diversity movement not only come from without; they also come from within.
Ironically, this second type of danger only becomes apparent when the first danger has been overcome. Let us take a best-case scenario. We encounter a 'small language' - my shorthand in this talk for a 'minority or endangered' language - where the people are enthusiastic about wanting their language to survive. The local and national government is actively sympathetic about wanting the language to survive. And, as part of this active interest, cash has been made available to do what has to be done. It may take a generation - twenty years or more - to achieve this scenario, but such cases do exist. Catalunya has been one. Wales has been another. I live in Wales and I have visited Catalunya twice in the past couple of years as part of ongoing dialogues about language diversity. Both regions are in this second phase of language maintenance. The arguments about the need to preserve linguistic identity are taken for granted, and the outcome has been institutionalised in various ways - such as in the press, in broadcasting, or in parliament. In such places there is no longer a need to persuade the population of the dangers of globalization or the importance of their local language. Those battles have been won. And, as a result of amazing efforts in the last 15 years, there are many such places, the world over. Some people think that, at that point in these places - to continue the metaphor - the war is over. But it is not. It is simply about to move into a new phase - a phase which is much more difficult to manage than the first, because it involves battles within the community. And in the end, without good management, these battles can be just as destructive as an unchecked globalization. What are these battles? I will illustrate from the situation in Wales, which I
This is what I meant by saying 'the main danger comes from within'. To adapt an old biblical maxim: a kingdom divided against itself shall not stand. For the issue is much more serious than just a matter of publicity. The kingdom especially will not stand when the focus of the divisiveness is age-related. Repeatedly, those involved in the maintenance of small languages refer to young people, as I have just done. The reason is obvious. The teenage generation - which was of course the focus of the Manic Street Preachers initiative - is of critical importance, for teenagers will be the parents of the next generation of children. (In fact, looking at the birth statistics in Wales, many of them already are the parents of the next generation of children!.) But my point is that, whenever they have their children, if they are not interested in using their ethnic language to their children, the cause is lost. We have big words for this sort of thing: we call it 'inter-generational transmission', and we accept that a sine qua non of language maintenance is that inter-generational transmission must not be lost. The big words suggest a big time-scale, of 25 years or more. But the loss, at the level of the individual, can happen within a day - the day after the new baby is born. In fact, psychologically, it has happened long before the baby is born, for the confrontational atmosphere is rife in a society where a small language is in the forefront of public attention, and it will have already permeated the consciousness of the new parent. So our focus, in fact, has to move away from the parents to the society of which they are a part. Where does this confrontational attitude come from? Studies of language attitudes - a well- established research domain in sociolinguistics - can provide some answers. It is important, firstly, to appreciate that the attitudes involved are found in all languages - big as well as small. In any speech community, a few people want to protect their language against what is perceived to be unwelcome change (what is usually called 'purism'), whereas others welcome change, diversity and innovation. English has its purists too, as does French, and Spanish, and Shona, and Zulu. There may even be societies and institutions set up to protect the language - organizations such as The Queen's English Society in London, or the French Academy. The fact that no such organization has ever succeeded in protecting a language from change - French now is hugely different from the language as it was spoken when the Academy was established in 1635 - does nothing to diminish the vigour with which purists advocate their case of 'eternal vigilance'. In the case of English, each generation has repeated the same arguments - and in the meantime the language lives on, growing from strength to strength. If English really were deteriorating, as the purists maintained in the 1700s, the 1800s, and the 1900s, then it would hardly have come to be the world language it is today. English, of course, has learned to live with the attacks of purists, over the past three centuries. A big language, like English, can cope with all of this. But for a small language like Welsh it is a very different matter. Purists are always a tiny minority, within a community, but they are usually some of its most influential members, and in a small community they wield disproportionate influence, as elders, orators, story-tellers, academics, and suchlike. One purist in a thousand is inevitably more prominent than one in a million. As long as the community remains traditional in behaviour and belief, there is no problem, of course. Conflict only arises when the community begins to change, and becomes susceptible to global influences. Then we encounter the situation illustrated by my Welsh example. A purist minority inculcates feelings of inferiority in the majority, who are made to feel that they do not speak the language correctly - which means, not according to the rules of the grammar books originally written by other purists. The paradox is well illustrated by the remark, often made by English speakers, that 'foreigners speak English much better than I do'
- a patent absurdity, yet demonstrating the way in which people have allowed themselves to be brainwashed by the purist image of the language. And the same point is often made in relation to Welsh. 'I don't speak proper Welsh' say - most Welsh-speaking people. Small languages inevitably have an inferiority complex, and if there were a language psychiatrist the first thing he or she would say is to get over it, move on. But this is very difficult to do. Take one of the symptoms of language neurosis: the fear of loanwords. This is something which affects big languages as well as small ones. Several countries have expressed concern over the way words from English are entering their language, and have
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taken steps to try to stem the flow, even sometimes by instituting laws which attempt to ban them. Here too, let us learn from English. What would have happened to the English language if it had forbidden the arrival of loanwords? It would be a language a tenth of the size that it is today, and it would never have become the language of science. English has, like a vacuum- cleaner, sucked in words from over 350 other languages during the past 1000 years - over 10,000 words from French in the early Middle Ages, for example, and all the words from Old Norse at that time. Of the million or so words in English today, 80 percent are not Anglo- Saxon in origin. From a grammatical point of view, English is a Germanic language, but from a lexical point of view it is Classical/Romance. (And thus there is a source of irony when we encounter French objections to the supposed Anglo-Saxon mentality expressed by such loans as le computer, forgetting that computer was originally a loan into English from the parent language of French.) Loanwords, even on this massive scale, have not harmed English. They have changed its character, certainly. English today is not the same as it was in the year 1000. But is this a bad thing? Much of the delight we have in reading or watching Shakespeare stems from his ability to manipulate stylistic contrasts originating in loanwords from French and Latin. And today, the fact that I have the choice between kingly, royal, and regal, for example, gives me a range of stylistic nuances which would not be available to me if I had only one of these words at my disposal. In short, loanwords increase the expressive richness of a language. That is one of the ways, probably the chief way, in which a language grows. But many speech communities, nonetheless, react against loanwords, and insist on translating the loanwords into something they feel to be 'native'. Even in English, there have been people who have tried to translate French, Latin, and other loanwords into Anglo-Saxon equivalents - notably William Barnes in the 19th century, who proposed such coinages as birdlore for ornithology. And there are those in France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Wales, and many other countries who systematically translate English words into traditional language forms. One talks of Academy French or Committee Welsh. There is nothing wrong with these activities, as they add to the diversity of a language. What is wrong is when people try to legislate, to insist that one version is 'right' and the other 'wrong', and try to make others feel inferior for using the 'wrong' version, sneering at the loanwords by calling them 'Spanglish' or 'Franglais', and so on. The issues involved need to be thoroughly debated, and so far, in the context of language diversity, they haven't been. Some might even see a contradiction here. On the one hand, to assert that the world is a mosaic of linguistic visions, and that each language is unique in its cultural linguistic identity. On the other hand, to assert that mutual linguistic influence is natural and inevitable and that no language is unique in its cultural linguistic identity. I see no contradiction, because the two principles refer to different linguistic domains. Anthropological linguists do not usually dare to put a figure on it, but if one were to ask 'just how much of a language expresses the unique mindset and behaviour of a community?' what statistic would you come up with? The fact that balanced bilinguals can provide efficient translations most of the time suggests that this figure is relatively low. And when I ask people, few go beyond 25 percent. In other words, when translating between English and Icelandic (or any other language pair) the assertion is that, at least 75 percent of the time, the linguistic units equate. But in that remaining 25 percent there is a great deal that is untranslatable - words which express the culturally unique features of the two languages. So whether a loanword is a risk to cultural identity depends on what sort of loanword it is. And what happens is that most loanwords (all the ones to do with technology, for instance) add to the 75 percent domain - continually extending linguistic horizons as a reflex of cultural trends. It is naive to look for a simple relationship between language and culture. The relationship is complex and varied. Some words do seem to capture a strong cultural nuance - a French word such as chic, for example, or an American English word such as Thanksgiving. But most words are not like this: they do not carry such a nuance. When the French began to object to le weekend and other such words, it was the word they were objecting to, not the culture. They already had weekends. And it remains to be demonstrated that there is something specifically British or American about the weekend which was not already present
mediating between pressures that pull a language in two opposed directions. But these two directions relate to different functions. One function is the maintenance of intelligibility, at a national (or, in the case of English, international) level, and this fosters the development of a standard language and associated attitudes of correctness and propriety. The other function is the expression of identity - who we are (as an individual or a group), where we are from (regionally, socially, occupationally). This function manifests itself both interlinguistically, in the form of the individual languages which identify nation states or ethnic groups, and intralinguistically, in the form of the local accents and dialects which reflect where we were brought up. The two functions - language as intelligibility and as identity - have often been seen as being in conflict with each other, as presenting a matter of choice. In a bilingual or multilingual community, such as Wales, English (which guarantees intelligible communication with the outside world) is often seen as a threat to Welsh (which guarantees identity with the ethnicity of the population). A similar situation applies in all countries where there are minority groups (which probably means all countries, these days), and can be a ready source of emotional confrontation. It can apply within languages too, as seen in the uneasy relationship between Standard English and Singlish (Singaporian English) in Singapore. But there is no necessary conflict. If both intelligibility and identity are critical aspects of what it means to be human, then it is plain that a sensible philosophy of language management needs to allow for both. For both criteria link up with the concept of power, but in different ways. Intelligibility is an outward-looking criterion: it fosters the use of common languages, standard varieties, lingua francas. It enables us to be in intelligible contact with the largest number of people, and thus increases access to sources of power. Identity is an inward-looking criterion: it fosters the use of local dialects and accents, non-standard varieties, minority languages. It enables us to identifY with a particular group of people within a community (with more than one, if we are bilingual), and although that group is much smaller, the nature of the contact between its members is more intense, more intimate, and may be more useful. Everyone has experienced the rapport which can come from a shared accent, dialect, or language. And everyone knows that benefits - cultural, economic, political - can follow from that rapport. Jobs for the boys, or girls, is as old as humanity. And the main way you show you are one of the boys, or girls, is to talk like them. So, if I am monolingual in English, it will pay me - literally and metaphorically - to be bidialectal, or multidialectal. The new school curriculum for English in England and Wales emphasises this point, drawing attention to the need for all students to become confident users of standard English, but not at the expense of demeaning any regional dialect or other language they may have. This, of course, is the main change in attitude which distinguishes the kind of mother-tongue language-teaching we used to have in schools from that which is present now. And, if I have the opportunity, it will pay me to be bilingual, or multilingual - and even more to be multidialectal in my multilingual ism. To have a command of a small language along with a command of a big language is one step forward. But it should not stop there. To have command of a standard, educated variety of a small language along with command of a local, regional variety of a small language is another, perhaps even more important step. This last point is critical, as it raises the question, crucial to the language diversity movement: what does it mean to be bilingual? Everyone these days stresses the point about language use. It is important to use a language, if it is to survive. But it is unusual to find people reflecting on just what this means. In fact, 'use' is a complicated matter which has several dimensions. We must take into account, firstly, the four channels of language use: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. (Five if we include signing, in the context of deaf education.) The notion of bilingualism has to allow for differential use between these four. The theoretical maximum is to be able to handle all four well, of course. In reality, bilingualism all over the world shows very different levels of competence between the four, in an ascending order: people who can listen and not speak, speak but not read, and read but not write.
We also have to allow for differential competences within each of these channels. Take listening: at one extreme, there is someone who has 100% listening comprehension ability - understands everything he or she hears in a language in any style of a particular dialect. (No-one, of course, can understand all styles of all dialects, in any language.) At the other extreme, there is someone who has less than 1% listening comprehension ability - recognizing just the occasional word or phrase (eg I have a fluent command of Icelandic, but so far only in relation to the word Skaul!). A continuum of ability links these two extremes. And exactly the same continua link extremes within each of the other three channels. To adapt a notion from the European Year of Languages, Person A's portfolio for a particular language might be: 80% ability in listening, 50% in speaking, 90% in reading, and 10% in writing. And cutting across all this is the question of context (also called register, or variety). Person A might understand 80% of what she hears on the television, but only 40% of what she hears in the pub - or the other way round, of course. Or be able to cope with 80% of the language needed to speak successfully in informal contexts, and be able to cope with only 20% ofthe language needed in formal contexts. Or again, vice versa. The fallacy is to assume that intermediate steps along the various fluency continua are in some sense a failure. 'Person A has only got 50% reading ability, so she should work hard and get the other 50%.' In actual fact, all over the world, there are people who (for all kinds of reasons) have stopped midway along these continua, and are living perfectly happy lives - except, of course, when someone who is at a higher point along these continua criticizes them for 'not speaking properly', or whatever. The term 'semilingual' is available for us to describe people who are at mid-points along these continua. When I did a BBC World Service programme on this theme a few years ago, I asked people to write in if they thought they were semilingual, in this sense. I expected only a handful of letters, but we got over a thousand. A common theme was that these people had a very mobile upbringing, socially (being guest- workers, refugees, immigrants, etc), who never had the chance to learn a language fully. Many had several languages at their disposal, and were semilingual in all of them. Several actually claimed that they had no mother-tongue. A few were upset about it, but most were simply getting on with their lives. All were relieved to find that they were not abnormal. You will immediately see the applicability of this point to any country where there is a strong purist tradition, and where semilingualism is widespread - a typical scenario for small languages. There are people who are losing their command of the small language (slipping down the continua), for whatever reason. And there are those who have never got to the top of the continua, for whatever reason. Both tend to be condemned by purists, who thereby generate in the less strong-minded of these people that inferiority complex, which further harms their motivation to continue with the language. Purists, accordingly - and I don't care how often I repeat it - are a small language's worst enemy. It is sad to have to say it, because such people do. believe they have their language's best interests at heart; but they are nonetheless wrong. By contrast, as I have said, I take the view that a small language needs every friend it can get, and that someone who shows even the slightest interest in encountering a small language is a friend, and should be welcomed and included within the community, even if their levels are 1% all over, as it were. All the population need to be involved. In actual fact, most people living in a community where there is a small language are already, to a degree, on the continua. Very few people in Wales know no Welsh at all, or in New Zealand know no Maori at all. My Icelandic has actually grown by 300 percent since Wednesday - I now know three words. It is inevitable that, as soon as you come to visit a community or come to live in it, you start moving on the various continua: you will start hearing the language regularly, you will see it around you routinely. Intllitions begin to be shaped. And people need to have this foetal sense of the small language reinforced. If I were in charge of a marketing drive for Welsh, for example, I wouldn't draw a contrast between Welsh-speaking and non-Welsh-speaking. That is divisive. I would say: everyone in Wales uses Welsh. YOll can't avoid it. Just by crossing the border, your reading comprehension starts to climb. You are already on the continuum. So, you know one Welsh word? Double your competence, learn another ...! Minority language planners need to think positive, not negative:
Harnessing the Internet to the service of language diversity is the main means we have to counter the forces of purism, and this must surely be one of the themes of this conference. The Internet is the best present the language diversity movement could have had. And it came at just the right time. Let us go back to coincidences. Is it any coincidence that the first truly public statement of the world language crisis, at the Quebec Congress in 1992, coincided with the first year of operation of the World Wide Web? The Internet can do more to foster language diversity among young people than any other means. So we need to find ways of getting language-endangered communities wired - which often means, ensuring a reliable electricity supply. Here, as always, linguistic progress depends on economics.
Talking of presents, it is usual to give somebody a present for their birthday, and my present to Vigdis is this paper. She in her turn has given us all a present, in the form of this conference. If there were a Nobel prize for Language, I think she would win it. But of course there is no such prize. Indeed, everything has its prizes these days - except language. There are the Nobel Prizes for literature, peace, physiology or medicine, physics, chemistry, and economics. There are the Pulitzer Prizes for journalism, music, fiction, and so on. There is the Booker Prize, the Turner Prize, the Prix Goncourt. There is the world's largest financial prize, the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion. Every subject seems to have its prize - but not language and languages. A prize is much more than its financial value. It is worth far more in publicity for the subject. Many subjects do not need the publicity. But languages do. We need a prize, and possibly we will find an Alfred Nobel or a John Marks Templeton among the companies which have been at the forefront of globalization and who are perhaps now feeling a little uncomfortable about it. But if we ever did get such a prize, what would we call it? If you win an Academy Award you are given an Oscar. If you win a television award you are given an Emmy. If you are given a music award in Canada you are given a Juno. Ifwe do ever get a language prize, I think it should be called a Vigdis.
