I write this – on Guy Fawkes Day – having just returned from a week of lecturing in Beijing. The overall theme of my talks was the ‘social life of language’, and I selected five aspects that I hoped were both timely and of broad appeal.
I began with what some might imagine to be a rather ‘fringe’ topic: the very longstanding interest in a universal language. In fact, however, whether attempting to capture the original human language – the language of Eden – or trying to construct a medium more logical and regular than ‘natural’ languages, the long historical search tells us a great deal about the aspirations for a language that would help to unite us all. My audience agreed that – almost wholly unsuccessful as attempts have been over the centuries – the impulse is a valiant one, perhaps a noble one.
I then moved on to the difficulties of teaching and learning languages – particularly ‘small’ languages – in a world where something like a de facto universal language has in fact arrived; I refer of course to English. Discussion here led inexorably to broader matters of the relationship between language and power, the subject of the third lecture. Of particular interest were the distinctions drawn between the assumption of power by ‘large’ languages – as an inevitable symptom of the dominance of their speakers, of course – and the empowerment of smaller communities that so often rests upon the liberal leanings (where they exist) of larger ones. While there is a great deal of contemporary talk about empowerment, it is clearly not as robust or, indeed, as desirable a quantity as its rather rawer rival.
The fourth talk attempted some general contextualisation, with special attention given to current discussions under the rubric of ‘the ecology of language’. I encouraged my audience to understand that many modern treatments are not, in fact, about ecology in the widest and most accurate sense of the word. That is, they tend not to dwell upon the more inclusive picture that shows – that must show – languages in all their interrelationships, for good or ill. Rather, they focus almost exclusively upon arguments in favour of the maintenance of small or flagging varieties. Not an ignoble stance, to be sure, but one that is impoverished through neglect of the fuller and more Darwinian nexus in which languages mingle and rub up against one another. And finally, I spoke about the longstanding urge to protect languages, to keep them free from both internal and external contamination. Prescriptivist impulses, while anathema to many modern linguists, are in fact still very much with us. Indeed, those same linguists who reject ‘interference’ with the ebb and flow of language, and who argue that language change and variation should be allowed to ‘naturally’ well up from below and not be imposed by fiat from above, make linguistic prescriptions all the time – most notably under headings like ‘language planning.’
I was glad to discover – although not really surprised, I suppose – that the members of my audience, many of whom were from Chinese ethnolinguistic minority groups, attested to the relevance of these lecture topics across a wide range of contexts. They confirmed my sense that, while every language-contact situation is unique, its uniqueness does not rest upon the presence of elements seen nowhere else: on the contrary, the important components of the ‘social life of language’ are remarkably similar in different settings. What we see in each, then, is a unique configuration of these social and linguistic constituents. This has important ramifications for academic study – and, of course, for the intended beneficiaries of that study.
- John Edwards, author of Multilingualism.
Click on the 'preview' link to read an extract from John's fantastic book. Don't just take my word for it- read what the Times Higher Education had to say below!
Best wishes,
Ellena
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