'Status' drives extinction of languages

[Christina Paulston]

Well, if you are going to talk about status and lge shift, you must  
make sure that you have the possibility of upward social mobility.  In  
a caste like social organization with ascribed status, status is not  
going to bring about shift.  According to (what I think is one of the  
brightest sociolinguists around) Annamalai  And I wonder if something  
of the same thing may not be going on in cases of Ferguson's classic  
diglossia where you get lge maintenance beyond what you would expect.   
But I seem to have missed the article you are discussing.  Could  
someone forward me a copy, please
On Feb 14, 2008, at 12:54 PM, Stan & Sandy Anonby wrote:

> 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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>