Research about the threshold of a linguistic 'slippery slope'?

[Harold F. Schiffman]

Dear Nicholas,

The threshold of the slippery slope you refer to is called linguistic
"tip" in the literature; the phrase was coined by Nancy Dorian in her 1981
book _Language Death: The Life Cycle of a Scottish Gaelic Dialect_: "In
terms of possible routes toward language death it would seem that a
language which has been demographically highly stable for several
centuries may experience a sudden 'tip' after which the demographic tide
flows strongly in favor of some other language." (p. 51)

Sorry to say, I have not seen in the linguistic anthropological literature
any research or speculation about what the tipping point might be for a
given language in terms of an actual percentage of speakers. The articles
I have seen focus more on what kinds of socioeconomic factors and
linguistic ideologies have precipitated the tip. (For example, Elizabeth
Mertz's article on Cape Breton Gaelic in the edited volume _Investigating
Obsolescence_).

I believe there was a panel revisiting the concept of linguistic tip at
last year's truncated AAAs (American Anthropological Association Annual
Meetings) in Atlanta (or was it in San Francisco!). Are any of that
panel's participants on this list?

There _is_ a slightly different kind of claim floating around that is
based not on percentages, but on actual numbers of speakers. This claim,
frequently repeated by linguists and the media, is that a language needs
100,000 speakers to survive. This claim originated as a series of cautious
speculations on the part of the linguist Michael Krauss, and is not a
scientific theory. I trace the origin and transformation of this claim,
and its application to Scottish Gaelic by British journalists, in my
article titled "'Gaelic Doomed as Speakers Die Out'? The Public Discouse
of Gaelic Language Death in Scotland." It is forthcoming next year in
_Leasachadh na Gaidhlig: Revitalising Gaelic in Contemporary Scotland_,
Wilson McLeod, ed., Dunedin Academic Press (Edinburgh). I'd be happy to
send you a copy via e-mail.

Based on my analysis of this "100,000 speakers" claim, I would tend to
take with a grain of salt any claims of an actual percentage of speakers
within a community needed to maintain a language as a means of everyday
use. Not least because journalists' favorite way to use the 100,000
speakers claim in Scotland is as "scientific proof" of the supposedly
imminent (or even completed) death of Scottish Gaelic, and as an argument
against public funding for Gaelic revitalization efforts.

Regards,

Emily McEwan-Fujita
ecmcewan at alumni.uchicago.edu


> --- Nicholas Ostler <nostler at chibcha.demon.co.uk>
> wrote:
>
> > Dear All
> >
> > This is a question, rather than a bit of
> transmitted
> > news.
> >
> > It is sometimes claimed that there is a critical
> > proportion of speakers
> > of a given language in a multilingual community
> that
> > must be maintained,
> > if that language is to continue in everyday use.
> > Such a claim makes
> > sense in a context where there is a background
> > metropolitan language
> > (typically English, but it could as easily be
> > Portuguese, Russian,
> > Spanish or Chinese) that is under no threat, and
> > spoken by numbers
> > approaching 100% . The other, less widely spoken,
> > language can only
> > survive in stable bilingualism with this
> background
> > language if there is
> > a fair presumption, within a given community, that
> > enough listeners are
> > there to understand it.
> >
> > The idea, then, is that there is a kind of tipping
> > point, or a threshold
> > of the slippery slope, perhaps as high as 70%; if
> > the lesser-speaking
> > community dips below this proportion, it will tend
> > to diminish further,
> > until (without active policy measures) it might
> die
> > out altogether. But
> > above this proportion, its numbers can vary up and
> > down with no
> > long-term effect or trend visible.
> >
> > Is there a percentage figure one could give, and
> if
> > so is there any
> > research that bears directly on this point?
> >
> > Nicholas Ostler
> >
> > --
> > Foundation for Endangered Languages
> > Registered Charity: England and Wales 1070616
> > 172 Bailbrook Lane, Bath BA1 7AA, England
> > +44-1225-852865  nostler at chibcha.demon.co.uk
> > http://www.ogmios.org
> >
> >
> >
>
>