ELL: Wall Street Journal: Counter-reading.

[Theresa Savage]

Dear ELLers,

Miller's article has got to be one of the best things that ever happened to
scholarship in endangered languages as far as I am concerned.  It
highlights the fact that it is not only minority groups and linguists who
have an opinion about the pros and cons of language diversity.  Researchers
in the field of business, particularly international business and, more
specifically in an area known as 'Decision Science' (part of studies in
Management and yes, they do regard it as a 'science'), are delving into
this very issue.  I have been involved in the 'Decision Sciences' research
too since a restructuring at my university put Languages into the School of
Business in 1996.  The longer we are located in this school, the stronger
the pressure to 'refocus' research to be 'in line' with business.  So, to
make a long story short, it is not because I was so astute to realise that
linguists have to address linguistic issues that apply to international
business, but rather a decision on my behalf to survive in spite of
economic rationalism.  In order to ensure that my old department has a
place in the School of Business, I have been doing some collaborative
research with a 'Decision Scientist'.   We have been investigating ethical
ways for multinational corporations to make decisions about language choice
based on the linguistic point of view using social judgment theory (and a
lot of statistical analysis, which is what seems to make it so
'scientific').  I am not aware of any other collaborative research of this
sort, but it is obvious that there are many linguists who do/have done
research about the economics of language/bilingualism or the use of
language by multinational firms.  FranÁois Grin, FranÁois Vaillancourt,
Florian Coulmas, Nigel Holden, Jernudd Bjorn, Albert Breton and Peter
Mieszkowski are only a few such people.  In fact it is Florian Coulmas
(1992, Language and Economy) who threw down the challenge, "*the value of
language is determined by a number of factors, all of which contribute to
make language not only economic process.  By recapitulating the most
important ones we can now approximate a more detailed specification of what
is to be understood by the term "value of language," although the weighing
of the factors is a difficult problem yet to be resolved.  At the present
state of our knowledge it seems impossible to me to offer a solution, which
is not only well argued but also free of arbitrary decisions.  This is due
to a deficit in theoretical and empirical research, which can only be
amended gradually by collecting more information on how economic processes
are affected by linguistic conditions*" (Coulmas 1992:88-89).

In other words, we are trying to develop a framework for the assessment of
the value of a language within the context of a firm's strategic
environment.

In the course of my collaboration with a Decision Scientist, it has struck
me that although he is an altruistic person and most of the people I have
met at a Decision Science conference seem to be interested in ethical
practices for businesses (and that does include the language issues too),
there are a lot of people out there who are not that way inclined.
Besides, the person I am collaborating with does not have a linguistics
background, although he is studying it based on readings I suggest to him.
(His understanding of linguistics far surpasses my understanding of the
statistics we have been using!)
What makes matters worse, the ones making the decisions have the power to
either take the opinion of linguists and minority language groups seriously
or not.  If we do not address these more 'unpleasant' questions seriously
from the point of view that decisions about languages are being made by
multinational business corporations, then we can not be effective in our
fight to help save endangered languages.  Hartmut Haberland hit the nail on
the head with his comment that "heresy and the asking of unpleasant
questions is a good think".  He's right that we should not be dependent on
people like Miller to ask these questions.  We have to get our heads out of
the sand and look at what is really going on in the world of business as it
has a big impact on minority language groups.  Heresy or not, I am involved
in this line of research and I could use some help from people who share my
views.  I have a heavy teaching commitment and not much time to devote to
the research side of these kinds of issues.  It would be so nice to have
more linguists working in this field or at least understand that if I do
ask a 'heretical question' on this list, you will have some idea of where I
am coming from.  I'm afraid of being shot down for being a heretic to tell
you the truth.

Theresa

Theresa Savage
Marketing and Languages
Japanese Section
The School of Business
Swinburne University of Technology
John Street
Hawthorn, Victoria 3122
(613) 9214-5571


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