Wednesday, October 31, 2007

in support of linguistic diversity, & multilingualism.

Naalen ('water flowing around') mountain, Southern Tutchone country, Yukon. September 29, 2007.

So a long time ago, almost a year ago, I wrote some little counterpoints to this essay that... annoyed me. & mystified me... as I really couldn't quite believe the linguist who was writing it was actually saying the things he was saying (a lot of respect I had for him disappeared rather swiftly). But anyway... & I suppose I was in an argumentative mood, so I felt compelled to write responses. Then I put it away, because really I only did it for myself, to make it stop irking me, but now I just found it whilst going through some older files and I decided to post it now, because the topic of 'dying languages' has been popping up a lot lately... It is a little snarky, perhaps, but it's how I feel. & I really do think it was an irresponsible article -- there is SO much that he is overlooking! So much...

Here I have italicized quotes from him that I am addressing... Again, the full piece of his writing is here.

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“Surely easier communication, while no cure-all, would be a good thing worldwide. There's a reason the Tower of Babel story is one of havoc rather than creation.”

Yes, the Babel story is one of chaos – but seeing multiplicity & diversity as chaos is but ONE of the many myths and folktales dealing with the creation of different languages. Many are quite neutral about multiple languages, or even see it as a positive solution that arose from too much fighting when everyone spoke the same language. (I personally like the image from the Gunwinggu language of Northern Australia, who speak of a Dreamtime goddess giving each of her children a language as a toy to play with, leading to their descendants speaking these diverse tongues) Regardless – it’s really narrow to look at diversity as only chaotic. Really unfortunate. I’ll return to this.

“Languages are hard to learn for adults, especially ones as different from English as Native American ones. In Pomo, the verb goes at the end of the sentence. There are sounds it's hard to make when you're not born to them. For busy people with jobs and families, how far were they ever going to be able to get mastering a language whose word for eye is ‘uyqh abe?”

I find this especially ignorant coming from a linguist who apparently speaks other languages, & should also not be forgetting the immense capacity we possess to adapt, & to learn and maintain multiple languages. Yes, it’s certainly easier when you’re under 10, perhaps, but it’s far from impossible even when you’re much older. Easier communication is certainly a goal, but it can be attained by everyone becoming multilingual, not reducing human speech to ONE language. Just because McWhorter believes that learning a language is difficult, doesn’t mean that people who do strongly value learning a certain language for whatever reason, is going to let a pharyngeal consonant or some different verb placement rules stop them? Clearly McWhorter has never been in the situation of learning a language much different from English. He severely underestimates the cultural value of language and is just repeating popular beliefs about the ‘difficulty’ of language learning. If you want to learn a language – especially if you are, for example, of a minority group like the Pomo speaking an indigenous language – you may have any number of reasons for motivation that could be sacred, ancestral, etc, that transcend the busyness of daily life. From my own recent research in the Southern Yukon, I have witnessed a number of different strategies that busy people incorporate into their daily lives to make practice a part of their routines and this too helps motivate them. (I must be sure write about this as a bigger part of my thesis!)

...Supposedly one's language determines one's cultural outlook. But a simple question shows how implausible that notion is. To wit, precisely what "cultural outlook" does English lend its speakers? Thinking about the broad heterogeneity of people using this language, it is obvious that the answer is none, and the academic literature on the topic yields little but queer little shards of faint support for the "language is culture" idea. Which brings us back to languages as, simply, languages.

This, frankly, is pretty flippant. I can't believe it, really. Is he just trying to play devil's advocate here? Firstly, it seems he hasn’t been reading much anthropological linguistics lately, as there is plenty support for the ‘language is culture’ idea (I can make a reference list quite easily!). I am no extreme linguistic determinist – I don’t think that language itself is the sole determiner of what you can think about, or how you think – but I can cite both literature & anecdotes aplenty that show how language can certain shape our thought. Anyone fully bilingual, or even having seriously studied another language, been immersed in it & conversation could tell you how they speak or write or even structure thoughts differently in their various tongues. Different vocabularies, structures do affect us. Yes, if we try, if we invent new words, coin new phrases, we can talk about anything in any language. But some languages (in both their structure and content) are designed better for talking about certain things that are culturally relevant, and that makes it very difficult to deny the reciprocal relationship between language and culture.

Maybe Inuktitut doesn't have as many words for snow as we used to think, but if you'd like to talk about seal hunting -- or caribou hunting, if you're a Northern Athapaskan, I promise its not hard to find specialized vocabulary for this. In many cases, language and traditional environmental knowledge are deeply interlinked, and many conservationists are looking to not only cultural practices but to the languages spoken by those cultural groups to better understand ecological systems -- place names are a perfect example of this -- names often encode meanings of the practices performed at a particular place. To learn these places is to better understand how to preserve the balance in that system.

(A new book has just come out, by K. David Harrison, and it discusses much of what I just alluded to --

& then his query as to what cultural outlook does English lend its speakers? Yes, it’s a vast & heterogeneous popit's called 'When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World's Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge'. I highly recommend it) ulation that speaks this language, & thus McWhorter shuts it down all straw-person-like. Really, maybe he should be asking: what cultural outlooks (PLURAL!) do the different varieties of English (PLURAL!) lend their speakers? East Indian Englishes, First Nations Englishes, all are diverse ways (PLURAL!) of speaking.

Also, if we want to look at English as a global language – for many it is a language of commerce, of business, etc. That’s definitely going to be a reciprocal force in affecting one’s cultural outlook. Languages are not simply languages. Just because most contemporary Englishes (as opposed to the power of the word in say, Old English, e.g. see Beowulf) do not lend a spiritual value and power to the act of speaking, as say, the contemporary Sakha language does, does not mean we can impress our beliefs about language on others. Languages are vessels for beliefs. To allow them to be eliminated for the sake of thinking that we’ll all communicate better is simply colonial. Thus I squirm when he says things like:

Yet the extinctions cannot be stopped, for the most part.

Yes, it can be difficult to reverse language shift, but it can be done, & will continue to be done. I don’t disagree with McWhorter when he implies that language death is natural and part of diversity. This is true. Languages do die out. No one speaks Gothic or Sogdian or Anasazi anymore. However, if people wish to stop their language (& their culture) from being wiped out but colonialism and dominant cultures and languages, they need to be supported. It is not too late, & it is not a worthless task. There will always be many people who believe that it’s natural to let even their own native tongue disappear, & many others who will devote their lives to keeping that language alive. Ideologies differ cross-culturally and within any given group from one culture. However, I feel it’s my responsibility not to contribute to another’s language death; as a linguistic anthropology student I want to ally myself with people who are working to revitalize their languages and cultures.

Maybe despite many people best efforts, 90% of our 6000-ish languages will disappear and we’ll only speak one or two someday. But it’s also a natural part of language growth that the cycle of language creation would begin again, groups splitting off creating dialects turning into languages. That wouldn’t stop. Diversity would recreate itself, in the grand scheme of things. (He should know this! He studies creoles!)

For those still uncomfortable given that this single language would be big bad English, then notice how that discomfort eases when you imagine the language being, say, Lenape.

Um, no I am not less comfortable imagining the world language being Lenape, or Edo or Kirghiz or Maori or Ukrainian. Any one of these languages being the sole human method of communication means that we lose the other nearly-6000. Simply, that disturbs me. There are different insights to be gained from different languages, different ways of speaking and communicating, & you don’t have to subscribe to some extreme version of linguistic relativity to comprehend that.

If people truly come together, then they speak a common language.

You need only look to places where people apparently speak the same language (Serbo-Croatian in Yugoslavia, English in Northern Ireland, Kinyarwanda in Rwanda) & have certainly not been creating togetherness. Truly coming together, in my mind, is learning to respect and understand diversity, not eliminating it, and this certainly includes becoming functionally multilingual.

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