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I found the discussion about Miller's article very interesting on several
counts. Here are a few of my thoughts:<br>
<br>
First, I agree that preferences or non-preferences for food are most likely
not 'objective', but based on cultural and even political attitudes. Why
do many people, even staunchly non-vegetarian, object to eating horse meat?
I guess that the line of thinking goes something like this: you cannot eat
an animal that has a (given) name, horses are usually named, hence, eating
horse meat is a kind of minor cannibalism. But I have tasted <i>sakura-sasimi</i>
in Japan, paper thin slices of raw horsemeat (after some hesitation, I admit),
and must say it was a real treat. (The name in itself is interesting, an
euphemism based on <i>sakura </i>'cherry (blossom)', but probably via <i>
sakurairo</i> 'pink'.) I have also eaten fried jellyfish in Hong Kong and
fried mutton testicles in Greece (even my daughter, 6 years old at that time,
liked them) and wouldn't hesitate calling them delicious.<br>
<br>
(I wondered, by the way, why there were no vegetarian voices on the list
in this particular thread of discussion -- there must be people for whom
the idea of eating grub must be as appalling as the idea of eating a Bic
Mac, or <i>vice versa</i>.) <br>
<br>
But probably more important is Miller's article itself. I found it extremely
interesting, for several reasons, one of the being his line of argumentation
-- I must admit, I am not so much interesting in <i>whether</i> he is wrong
or <i>what</i> he got wrong (quite some figures, e.g.), but <i>where</i>
he goes wrong.<br>
<br>
Last year, one of my Irish friends said to me, "You can never make peace
if you only listen to your friends." He was referring to the Northern Irish
Peace Process, of course, but I think his words have an even broader significance.
"You can never find out what's right and what's wrong if you only listen
to your friends." For this reason, I wouldn't dismiss Miller's article as
a mere nuisance; of course he is irritating, but so was Socrates. We need
people like him to continually check and counter-check the positions to which
most of the subscribers (more or less, I hasten to add, because I hope that
there is a certain productive disagreement even among the subscribers to
ELL) share. Not all of the questions he raises can be dismissed as irrelevant.
Obviously Miller suffers from monolingual myopia and he lacks a proper understanding
what bi- and multilingualism really is about; a not uncommon phenomenon in
the part of the world he comes from. But when he says,<br>
<br>
"This outlook gives short shrift to the interests and choices of people in
tiny languages groups,"<br>
<br>
he raises an interesting issue: what comes first, the languages or the speakers?
Now let's not shortcut this issue by saying "you cannot make this distinction",
since you obviously can. I guess Miller is being ironical when he says about
the UNESCO paper,<br>
<br>
"it’s only a matter of time before their current speakers fall silent" [i.e.
the speakers of languages close to extinction],<br>
<br>
since of course nobody is going to fall silent -- people will continue speaking,
just in another language. (Which doesn't necessarily mean that they will
be heard by many, no matter which language they speak.) Where he goes wrong
is his assumption that language change takes place in a kind of market place
(which is a metaphor that makes sense, especially to those who have read
their Bourdieu) where choices are being made rationally and without external
pressure. He appears to assume that language change (or language switch)
is a result of a free decision and always works to the best interest of those
who abandon their former language. Hence the extinction of threatened languages,
in his book, is the result of linguistic market forces and hence, a sign
of progress. This is pretty far away from reality, as many people know.<br>
<br>
But if it were really true what Miller says, viz.<br>
<br>
"A thread runs through the preservationist arguments suggesting that we can
benefit from <i>them</i>–that is, we in the developed world have much to
gain if they in the undeveloped world continue communicating in obscure languages
we don’t bother to learn ourselves."<br>
<br>
we would have to stop and think. Assuming that global cultural and linguistic
diversity is a good thing <i>globally</i> there would still be the question
<i>who</i> benefits from them most. Maybe some of us consider this question
a heresy, but if this is the case, I would be happy to be the gadfly that
keeps asking this question -- out of the conviction that heresy and, in general,
the asking of unpleasant questions is a good think. Of course, ideally we
shouldn't be dependent on people like Miller to ask these questions for us.<br>
<br>
Your turn.<br>
<br>
Hartmut Haberland<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://babel.ruc.dk/~hartmut/">http://babel.ruc.dk/~hartmut/</a><br>
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