'Status' drives extinction of languages

[Felecia Briscoe]

Doesn't status really mean the language spoken by the group that controls the most resources?

Felecia 




-----Original Message-----
From: owner-lgpolicy-list at ccat.sas.upenn.edu on behalf of Stan & Sandy Anonby
Sent: Thu 2/14/2008 11:54 AM
To: lgpolicy-list at ccat.sas.upenn.edu
Subject: Re: 'Status' drives extinction of languages
 
Interesting. Sounds like it's broadly researched.  I've got a couple of 
comments.

1) I wonder how widely the status argument can be applied. For instance, the 
article says the researchers point out that bilingual societies do exist: 
"But the histories of countries where two languages co-exist today generally 
involve split populations that lived without significant interaction, 
effectively in separate, monolingual societies. Only recently have these 
communities begun to mix, allowing language competition to begin."

Maybe the populations lived without significant interaction because the 
status difference was so great. Maybe mixing happened recently only because 
the lower status language began to gain prestige.

2) I believe that the increased status of French in Quebec may have helped 
in creating a larger percentage of speakers there. However, I think larger 
factors included the flight of English speakers and large immigration from 
Francophone countries.

Stan Anonby



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Harold Schiffman" <hfsclpp at gmail.com>
To: "lp" <lgpolicy-list at ccat.sas.upenn.edu>
Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2008 11:27 AM
Subject: 'Status' drives extinction of languages


> 'Status' drives extinction of languages
> Bob Beale
> ABC Science Online
>
> Thursday, 21 August 2003
>
>
>
>
>
> A language's status in society is the best way to predict if it is
> headed for extinction Languages evolve and compete with each other
> much like plants and animals, but those driven to extinction are
> almost always tongues with a low social status, U.S. research shows.
> The social status of a language is the most accurate way of predicting
> whether it will survive, argue researchers in a paper appearing today
> in the journal, Nature . They also suggest that active intervention to
> boost the status of rare and endangered languages can save them.
> "Thousands of the world's languages are vanishing at an alarming rate,
> with 90% of them being expected to disappear with the current
> generation," warned Dr Daniel Abrams and Professor Steven Strogatz,
> both of Cornell University in New York.
>
> The pair have developed a simple mathematical model of language
> competition to explain how dialects such as Welsh, Scottish Gaelic and
> Quechua - the most common surviving indigenous language in the
> Americas - have lost out to more dominant tongues.
> The model is based on data they collected on the number of speakers of
> endangered languages - in 42 regions of Peru, Scotland, Wales,
> Bolivia, Ireland and Alsaçe-Lorraine - over time. All have been in
> steep decline over the past century or so, and the model suggests that
> Scottish Gaelic and Quechua will be close to extinct by about 2030.
>
> Previous models of language dynamics have focused on the transmission
> and evolution of syntax, grammar or other structural properties of a
> language itself. Yet by comparing various influences that help to
> explain the steadily declining numbers of speakers of each language,
> Abrams and Strogatz singled out status as the single most significant
> factor that could predict its extinction threat.
>
> "Quechua, for example, still has many speakers in Huanuco, Peru," they
> note. "But its low status is driving a rapid shift to Spanish, which
> leads to an unfortunate situation in which a child cannot communicate
> with his or her grandparents." A language's fate generally depends on
> both its number of speakers and its perceived status, the latter
> usually reflecting the social or economic opportunities afforded to
> its speakers, they said. When two languages are in competition, the
> one that offers the greatest opportunities to its speakers will
> usually prevail.
>
> The researchers point out that bilingual societies do exist: "But the
> histories of countries where two languages co-exist today generally
> involve split populations that lived without significant interaction,
> effectively in separate, monolingual societies. Only recently have
> these communities begun to mix, allowing language competition to
> begin." They urged active intervention to slow the global rate of
> language decline, pointing out that their model also predicts that
> higher status will keep a language alive. They also cite a real-life
> instance where this has happened: "The example of Québec French
> demonstrates that language decline can be slowed by strategies such as
> policy-making, education and advertising, in essence increasing an
> endangered language's status."
> Similar measures may make a difference elsewhere, they argued.
>
> http://www.clipclip.org/Bevsiem/clips/detail/66166
>
> -- 
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