ELL: language and economy

Tue Apr 2 21:17:35 UTC 2002

I will try to explain my point of view concerning the economic benefits of
language diversity. And I think there are some, but they depend on the
particular situation of the language.

Catalan is a clear case, as it was in part its economic usefulness that made
it survive during opression. Workers from other parts of Spain often adopted
Catalan, as it was associated with economic success. Culture is a very large
notion, and it includes both language and economic behaviour. The economic
behaviour of Catalonia was and is different from that of the rest of Spain.
The regions of Spain with the highest domestic product per capita are:

1. Madrid (Comunidad de):          296 mio pesetas per capita in 1998
2. Navarra (Comunidad Foral):    288
3. Cataluña:                                  269
4. País Vasco:                              264

Average for Spain:                       218

Madrid does not really count as it is a large urbanized area, whereas the
three other regions include large rural zones as well (and are thus more
representative). The three other regions at the top are quite distinct from
Castilia. This distinctiveness is symbolized by an own language (Navarre and
the Basque Country share the same). The distinctive language creates and
reinforces identities which play the role of economic incentives. Language
loss would symbolize cultural decay, which, of course, would have
demoralizing effects. Cultural and economic prosperity go hand in hand, as
they are linked to each other.

The three cases illustrate a positive link between linguistic/cultural and
economic distinctiveness. Language shift would lead to cultural decay which
in turn would cause an economic slowdown. Don't forget that economic
activity has to do with psychology, attitudes, motivation etc. I simplified
a bit, but I have to, because I don't want to pass the night in front of the
computer screen.

Unfortunately, you have the counter-examples of Galicia and Andalucia with
174 and 156 [mio. pesetas p.c.], resp. But these cases just show that
economic success was not a part of the regional culture (I don't mean to
offend Galicians and Andalucians, sorry).

However, prosperity or welfare is not just numbers. Social stability is a
prerequisite for economic activities. When communities have stable cultural
environments, where they must not think about language shift, they can have
cultural continuity, transmit traditional knowledge and acquire new
knowledge, and then combine both, and create thus a renovated culture which
they can still consider as being their own. A sudden change of the
sociocultural environment however leads to desorientation. Look at the
difficult situation of immigrants in Europe that are nowhere at home, look
at a part of East German youth which grows up in a sociocultural environment
they cannot adapt to. In all these cases, an interruption, a missing link in
the transmission of sociocultural knowledge leads to social marginalization
which has negative economic effects.

I sum up: You cannot and should not separate sociocultural stability and
continuity from economic welfare.

The cases I mentioned are from economically dominant countries and I finally
want to adapt the theory to other communities. Communities in whatever
country, living under cultural autonomy/stability/continuity cost less and
help to save money:

1. They help to preserve the environment. They know best that if you destroy
it today you will have to repair the damage tomorrow. Europeans once loved
to destroy forests and thought this was progress. Today, they want to have
parks, green lungs in cities, large forests and mountains where they can
discover the benefits of nature during their week-ends. Politicians had to
react to the demand and now you see small young trees everywhere. I guess
this replantation work is not cheap. Let the Amazonians live in the forest
and you won't have to care about replantation later, they care for it.

2. Once indigenous populations have been displaced, they have no choice but
to adapt to mainstream culture. This means they need schools, hospitals,
unemployment assistance etc. And it is not the concerned communities
themselves who are going to pay for it. They did not demand these
investments when they had their own way of life.

3. Destabilized communities need time to integrate to their new environment
and to identify and get along with their "new culture". In the meantime,
they are marginalized with all its negative consequences: Criminality, drug
abuse, unemployment, alcoholism etc. These are social costs.

As I simplified and idealized "traditions", you may find counter-examples to
every single argument. But we already know all the arguments of "the other
side", so we don't have to be afraid of it. There is no simple truth, but
always two sides. I hope I contributed some points to ours.

Good night

Gerd JENDRASCHEK

Equipe de Recherche en Syntaxe et Semantique
Universite de Toulouse-Le Mirail
France

----- Original Message -----
From: "Pierre Bancel" <pjbancell at yahoo.fr>
To: <endangered-languages-l at cleo.murdoch.edu.au>
Sent: Tuesday, April 02, 2002 6:28 PM
Subject: Re: ELL: Wall Street Journal editorial

> Hello all,
>
> Thanks to all, and in particular to Gerd and Hartmut.
>
> In fact, it seems that the answers to Miller's edito
> come from another field than that he choosed himself.
> I mean most things I have read until there are more on
> the ground of human right to diversity than economic
> efficiency. All this is well and good, for sure. I
> would however be quite interested to learn whether one
> might find an economic efficiency (either actual or
> prospective) for language diversity, in the same sense
> as it may be said of biological diversity as a
> reservoir of potentially exploitable genomes (I do not
> mean that I find this OK, only that there is a lot of
> money to make with it). I know of only very rare cases
> (and not strictly economic ones) where minority
> languages have been highly useful for major societies,
> e.g. during World War II when the US Air Force in the
> Pacific used Navajos as operators to prevent Japanese
> radiotapping (obviously a double-edged example again).
>
> However, I could word my belief that languages are
> very precious things, including from the economic
> viewpoint, as follows: every language represents an
> enormous amount of intellectual investment from
> millions of individuals over many millennia. This may
> NOT be worth nothing, even if we don't know exactly
> how YET. (Until recently, no one did exactly know why
> biological diversity was fit for.) And many "crazy"
> cultural investments have proved quite profitable on
> the long run (Versailles or the Pyramides are typical
> examples).
>
> One may expect that the one who will discover the
> economic value of linguistic diversity will (1) become
> rich (2) save thousands of languages. Will (s)he
> really divulgate it on this list tomorrow morning?
> (Thanks in advance.)
>
> Or must we concede that saving languages entails a
> non-financial view of human beings and societies and
> is contradictory with liberalism? (I have no definite
> opinion here. Once again, the question is not for me
> to know whether liberalism is bad or good, only to
> know whether or not it entails the linguistic
> uniformization of humankind.)
>
> **Regarding the interesting excursus on gastronomy.**
> Someone wrote here that most people did indeed prefer
> McDo's to grubs, otherwise McDonald's would sell
> GrubDo's (I would like to try that). I think this may
> be true only in basic economy readers, not in the real
> life. In the real life it happens quite often that you
> deprive large groups from their preferred food, cloth,
> and so on, and sell them things they don't like but
> must buy because there is nothing else at hand... To
> have killed all the buffaloes does not prove that the
> Lakota preferred cow meat and blue-jeans. And having
> the rivers and sources polluted and delivering
> undrinkable water does not prove that everyone prefers
> either Beaujolais or Coca-Cola.
>
> Best,
> Pierre
>
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