[lg policy] Language Policy and Human Development

[Selma K Sonntag]

Hi all,

I’m a political scientist who has been working on language policy issues
for eons. The article announced below is by a quite well known political
scientist (unlike me!). The authors seem, at least to me, to have a pretty
poor understanding of (socio)linguistics. So I’m curious to hear linguists’
and sociolinguists’ assessment, to see if my critique holds.



The main problem I have with this article is that it claims that ADOL
(average distance of language), the independent variable in this study, has
a causal effect on human development outcomes (e.g., ranking on the human
development index). The use of “language distance” as an independent
variable has become quite popular recently among political scientists and
economists looking at language policy issues. The authors of the article
below draw on Greenberg’s 1956 article in *Language* as the sole linguistic
source of the notion of “language distance” (measured by authors in article
below as number of nodes on linguistic genealogy/language family trees).
Most of my focus on language policy issues has been on South Asia; in the
same exact issue of Greenberg’s article was an article by Emeneau titled
“India as a Linguistic Area,” which suggests that the linguistic
commonalities between Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages in India through
language contact over the millennia renders “language distance” meaningless
in many ways.



So what I’d like to know is whether contemporary linguists and
sociolinguists would adhere more to Greenberg or Emeneau. I’d like to
debunk the claim of the article below that the “relationship between ADOL
and socioeconomic development is indeed causal”. I think that the way to do
this is to debunk the article’s premise that the learning costs of learning
a language that is “distant” from one’s native language are higher than
learning “a language proximate in structure”. In my understanding of
linguistics, having a genealogically distant language isn’t necessarily the
same as having a language that is not proximate in structure. Even if it
were, it would seem that there may be different learning costs according to
whether the differences in “structure” were phonological, syntactical,
morphological, and/or semantic.



Of course all of this is independent of another major sociolinguistic
misperception of (particularly American) political scientists: they tend to
assume that individuals the world over are monolingual and have a clearly
identifiable “native” language or “mother tongue”.



So if any of you could help me out, I’d appreciate it! This may indeed be
of interest to the whole list, or if you would like to reply to me directly
that would also be great.



Thanks so much!

Sam Sonntag

E-mail: Selma.Sonntag at humboldt.edu





*From:* lgpolicy-list-bounces+selma.sonntag=
humboldt.edu at groups.sas.upenn.edu [mailto:
lgpolicy-list-bounces+selma.sonntag=humboldt.edu at groups.sas.upenn.edu] *On
Behalf Of *Harold Schiffman
*Sent:* Wednesday, December 14, 2016 10:20 AM
*To:* lp <lgpolicy-list at groups.sas.upenn.edu>
*Subject:* [lg policy] Language Policy and Human Development


Language Policy and Human Development

December 13, 2016 By APSA
<http://www.politicalsciencenow.com/author/webapsanet-org/> Leave a Comment
<http://www.politicalsciencenow.com/language-policy-and-human-development/#respond>
[image: american_political-science-review]Language Policy and Human
Development

David D. Laitin, Stanford University
Rajesh Ramachandran, Goethe University Frankfurt

This article explores how language policy affects the socioeconomic
development of nation states through two channels: the individual’s
exposure to and (in reference to an individual’s mother tongue) linguistic
distance from the official language. In a cross-country framework the
article first establishes a robust and sizeable negative relationship
between an official language that is distant from the local indigenous
languages and proxies for human capital and health. To establish this
relationship as causal, we instrument language choice with a measure of
geographic distance from the origins of writing. Next, using individual
level data from India and a set of 11 African countries, we provide
microempirical support on the two channels—distance from and exposure to
the official language—and their implications for educational, health,
occupational and wealth outcomes. Finally, we suggest policy implications
based on our findings. *Read more.
<https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/language-policy-and-human-development/F0464F77F597CA8FA466758650718018>*

http://www.politicalsciencenow.com/language-policy-and-human-development/


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