Are dying languages worth saving? (fwd link)

[Chun Jimmy Huang]

Exactly, David, not only are the economic and bio-evolutionary 
metaphors inappropriate for explaining language situations, but 
combining them together, as Mufuwene does, is too convenient and 
Darwinistic.

Plus, many biologists today, like my wife, do not speak of 
evolution in terms of competition (or competition-driven 
adaptation) anymore...

Jimmy

On Wed Sep 15 20:12:59 EDT 2010, "D. Gloumbia" 
<dgloumbia at GMAIL.COM> wrote:

> I respect Mufwene very much as a linguist, and I know people who 
> know him
> well and have worked with him even on issues involving endangered 
> languages,
> where he has been more helpful than one might guess, as well as 
> encouraging
> the study of diverse languages and of young scholars working on 
> these
> topics. He has read a lot (though not very much cultural theory, 
> i think)
> and knows a lot. But I nevertheless find his writing on the topic
> offensively accepting of an economic (and bio-evolutionary, which 
> makes it
> too much like US neocon philosophy) metaphor that he knows better 
> than to
> apply to a non-economic (indeed, *sui generis*) phenomenon like 
> language.
> The tone of his writings on the topic is not progressive, and not
> sympathetic to any of the parties concerned about language loss. 
> Finally,
> his work, like too much of the good work on endangerment, fails 
> to target
> the #1 issue which I think needs to be addressed: what Foucault 
> would call
> the "positive power" created by major langauges that makes it 
> look like they
> are "more than" or "more modern than" others, *and that* it is 
> therefore
> "more modern" to lose the family language and take up English (or 
> Mandarin,
> or Hindi, or Spanish, or Russian, or...) relatively exclusively. 
> There are
> too many economic ("competition") and bad pseudo-biology (again,
> "competition") metaphors in the writing on this subject. I think 
> we need to
> ask more and more how to *undo *this "positive power" of major 
> languages, in
> addition to talking about saving languages.
> 
> I also really despair, I'll admit, when thoughtful academics 
> (like Mufwene,
> & maybe even the blogger) think a good use of their energies is 
> to
> discourage people from viewing the loss of languages as a 
> critical issue for
> our world today. it is more, not less, critical than outsiders 
> think; it
> does no good to give them any reason at all to dismiss the topic. 
> In this
> sense, while I in no way protest Mufwene's *right* to do such 
> work, I am
> forced to question its point and its motivation.
> 
> David
> 
> On Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 1:18 AM, Phillip E Cash Cash <
> cashcash at email.arizona.edu> wrote:
> 
>> 14 September 2010
>> UK
>> 
>> Are dying languages worth saving?
>> 
>> How people are trying to preserve endangered languages
>> 
>> Language experts are gathering at a university in the UK to 
>> discuss saving
>> the world's endangered languages. But is it worth keeping alive 
>> dialects
>> that are sometimes only spoken by a handful of people, asks Tom 
>> de Castella?
>> 
>> "Language is the dress of thought," Samuel Johnson once said.
>> 
>> About 6,000 different languages are spoken around the world. But 
>> the
>> Foundation for Endangered Languages estimates that between 500 
>> and 1,000 of
>> those are spoken by only a handful of people. And every year the 
>> world loses
>> around 25 mother tongues. That equates to losing 250 languages 
>> over a decade
>> - a sad prospect for some.
>> 
>> Access full article below:
>> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11304255
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- David Golumbia
> dgolumbia at gmail.com
> 



Dr. Chun (Jimmy) Huang
Post-doc, National University of Kaohsiung
Linguistic consultant, Tainan Pingpu Siraya Culture Association