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'What the world needs most is about 1000 more dead languages - and one more alive' (C.K. Ogden 1934) … and guess which one he meant… '[L]inguistic diversity begins next door, nay, at home and within one and the same man' (Martinet 1967: vii) 1. Introduction: we are ruining
the planet, and ourselves Luisa Maffi starts her Introduction to her new edited book On Biocultural Diversity. Linking Language, Knowledge and the Environment (2001) with a quote from Diane Ackerman (1997: xviii-xix). The quote sums up the seriousness with which we should take this catastrophe that we are causing ourselves: We are among the rarest of the rare not because of our numbers, but because of the unlikeliness of our being here at all, the pace of our evolution, our powerful grip on the whole planet, and the precariousness of our future. We are evolutionary whiz kids who are better able to transform the world than to understand it. Other animals cannot evolve fast enough to cope with us. It is possible that we may also become extinct, and if we do, we will not be the only species that sabotaged itself, merely the only one that could have prevented it. My first question to you is: are we going to prevent it?
Or are we part of the problem? It is our choice. Whether or not we have
a planet in a hundred years' time depends on you and me. Compared to the billions of years that our planet has existed and even the 500,000 years that our species, Homo sapiens, has been on earth (Cavalli-Sforza 2001: 59), one year is nothing. Still, my claim is that last year has seen more decisions being made that negatively affect the health of the whole ecosystem than any other year in the history of the planet. I shall towards the end of the paper sketch some of these, to give you the broader context. This includes a discussion about the security of life that we are rapidly losing, and the risks that we are taking today in order to regain the lost security. 2. The paradox: languages are part of the heritage of humanity - but we are killing them as never before I start with a paradox: languages are said to be part of the heritage of humanity - but we are killing them as never before. There is a lot of beautiful UNESCO, UN and national rhetoric about the importance of maintaining all the world's languages. They are part of the heritage of humanity. With the death of every language, a vast library dies. True. UNESCO's recently adopted Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity (adopted: at the 31st session of UNESCO's General Conference, Paris, France, October 15-November 3, 2001) calls for action against the homogenisation that is a result of languages disappearing: Cultural diversity is as necessary for humankind as biodiversity is for nature. In this sense, it is the common heritage of humanity and should be recognised and affirmed for the benefit of present and future generations. (Article 1) Stephen Wurm sums up many of the arguments for the need of linguistic diversity: Each language reflects a unique world-view and culture complex, mirroring the manner in which a speech community has resolved its problems in dealing with the world, and has formulated its thinking, its system of philosophy and understanding of the world around it. In this, each language is the means of expression of the intangible cultural heritage of people, and it remains a reflection of this culture for some time even after the culture which underlies it decays and crumbles, often under the impact of an intrusive, powerful, usually metropolitan, different culture. However, with the death and disappearance of such a language, an irreplaceable unit in our knowledge and understanding of human thought and world-view is lost forever. (Wurm, ed. 2001: 13). But despite all the nice rhetoric about the value of every single language, linguistic homogenising efforts seem to be gaining strength, judging by the actions of governments and the corporate world. Homogenising control can be achieved in several ways, physically and mentally (Table 1). Table 1. How to achieve homogenising control 1. People can be bombed to submission, as, for instance, the USA is doing all the time (and Israel is trying). 2. Prisons can be used for homogenising behaviour and values, including use of languages. In the USA, black and Latino males, meaning minorities, are over-represented in jails. 1,965,495 people were in custody in federal and state prisons and local jails in June 2001. 13,4% of black males, ages 25-29, were in prison or jail. In comparison, same ages: 4,1% of Latino males, and 1,8% of white males were in prison or jail. In Turkey, even today while we are discussing language policies at the congress, Kurdish children and youngsters are in prison and being tortured, only because they want Kurdish taught as a subject in schools and at universities (e.g. IMK 2002). 3. Economic sanctions work to force people to embrace certain values. 4. Symbolic violence homogenises people too - if what they represent is absent from important fora, it is made invisible, or even seen as a handicap. Some of the latest changes in the names of US educational offices or organisations are excellent examples of this (Table 2; emphases added). Table 2 Renaming used for stigmatisation
and invisibility Even if I concentrate on languages in this presentation,
I shall take examples from the other homogenising areas too, because
they are interconnected. Table 3. Language death or language murder?
Languages are today being murdered faster than ever before
in human history, and many more are threatened. A language is threatened
if it has few users and a weak political status, and, especially, if
children are no longer learning it, i.e. when the language is no longer
transmitted to the next generation. 3. We do not have the basic facts needed for language planning and policies If we want to do global language planning, as a prerequisite for sensible world language policies, we need minimally to know the basic facts about the world's languages. Today we do not have these facts. I shall give some examples. We do not know how many languages are there in the world. There is one acceptable and one regrettable reason for our ignorance. The acceptable reason is of course the fact that there are and cannot be any precise definitions for what a language is, as opposed to a dialect or other varieties. Structural similarity and mutual intelligibility do not differentiate well enough. The border between languages and other varieties is political not linguistic: A language is a dialect with an army and with state borders or the dialect of the elites (see the discussion about this in Skutnabb-Kangas 2000a Chapter 1). The unacceptable reason for our ignorance is lack of resources for the study of languages. In Denmark where I live there are some 24 million pigs and some 5 million people. At any one point there is exact information about each pig, their age, weight, life-span, etc. But there is NO idea of how many languages people in Denmark speak and who speaks them. Bacon is a major export item in Denmark but people's linguistic capital in languages other than Danish and English has so far been treated as invisible or even as a handicap. It has thus been invalidated and constructed as not convertible to other types of capital, e.g. symbolic capital in Bourdieu's terms (e.g. 1992) (or national capital in Beverly Skeggs' terms (2002. Most linguists say that there are around 6-7,000 languages. The Ethnologue <http://www.sil.org/ethnologue/> lists over 6.800 languages in 228 countries . But there might be even twice as many languages. There are deaf people in all societies, and where hearing people have developed spoken, oral languages, the Deaf have developed Sign languages, fully-fledged, complex, abstract languages (see Branson & Miller 1998, 2000, for brilliant analyses of the treatment of Sign languages and Jokinen 2000, Krausneker 1998, Lane 1992 and Skutnabb-Kangas 2002 for the (lack of) LHRs of Sign language users). Those who speak about 'languages' but in fact mean spoken languages only, participate through invisibilising Sign languages in killing maybe half the linguistic diversity on earth. In this paper I discuss only oral languages - we still know too little about Sign languages even if the literature is growing fast (see the web sites of the European Union of the Deaf, EUD (www.eudnnet.org) and the World Federation of the Deaf (www.wfdnews.org/). Neither do we know exactly where the languages of the world and their speakers and signers and users are. What is clear, though, is that just as Europe is genetically the world's most homogenous, i.e. poorest part (Cavalli-Sforza 2001: 23), Europe is also the poorest one on linguistic diversity. If we discount recent immigrants but count in ex-Soviet Union, we have only some 3% of the world's oral languages (see Price (ed.) 2000 for these). Middle East is also extremely poor on linguistic diversity. The Ethnologue (14th edition http://www.ethnologue.com/ethno_docs/distribution.asp) downloaded 23-01-02), gives the following figures and distribution: Europe 230 languages, 3%, the Americas (South, Central and North) have 1,013, 15%, Africa 2,058, 30%, Asia 2,197, 32%, and the Pacific 1,311, 19% (Table 4).
The Table is based on counts of oral languages only but
a count based on sign languages would probably give a similar distribution.
The figures and percentages are extremely unsure. I have counted them,
using a total of 6,800 languages and omitting all "over" and
"fewer than"; the figures themselves are hardly more than
educated guesses for most parts of the world. Two countries, Papua New Guinea with over 850 languages and Indonesia with around 670, have together a quarter of the world's languages. When we add those seven countries which have more than 200 languages each (Nigeria 410, India 380, Cameroon 270, Australia 250, Mexico 240, Zaire 210, Brazil 210), we get up to almost 3.500 languages, i.e. 9 countries have more than half of the world's oral languages. With the next 13 countries, those with more than 100 languages each (the Philippines, Russia, USA, Malaysia, China, Sudan, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Chad, Vanuatu, The Central African Republic, Myanmar/Burma and Nepal), 22 mega-diversity countries. Some 10% of the world's countries, have around 75% of the world's languages (and not one of them is in Europe if Russia is not counted as a European country ) (Table 6; these figures were from the Ethnologue's 12th edition).
Likewise, we do not have reliable figures for how many
users/(native) speakers the various languages have. Even a list of the
top 10 or 20 languages varies greatly, depending on which source and
year one uses. Many of the figures (and even names) are, even for these
big languages, less than accurate (see my discussion about the reliability
of the statistics, 2000a, Chapter 1). The world's top 10 languages in
terms of the number of speakers represent only 0.10 - 0.15% of the world's
oral languages, but these big 'killer languages' account for approximately
half the world's population.
Table 8 shows my latest attempt at counting, on the basis of several sources, detailed under the Table. Hindi has passed Spanish and English in terms of mother tongue speakers and is very close to English even in terms of all speakers. We have put back Arabic again on the list, with a figure counted on the basis of all mother tongue speakers on the Ethnologue 14th edition list.
In Table 9 I compare the rankings from Tables 3 and 4, combined with one I used in my 2000 book which was based on the Ethnologue, 12th edition, and on data from 1998 from the three Davids, Crystal (1997), Harmon (1995) and Graddol (1997). As we can see, Arabic is on that list, and Hindi and Urdu were combined into one language (by David Graddol, 1997: 8), something that I said in my book could cause a war - a somewhat ironic forced unity in today's India/Pakistan situation. Only Mandarin Chinese, Portuguese and Telugu have the same ranking in all three sources.
The conclusion from this little exercise is that when we are talking about the world's languages, even the biggest ones, we do not really know what we are talking about. Some of the changes in the Tables are due to changes in classification systems. Of the others, some are results of real changes, but many are results of guess-work. The problem is that we don't know which is which. We do not have even the basic information needed for efficient language planning and language policies. Even when speaking about millions of people, our figures are all but reliable. As my initial Danish example shows, we know more about pigs than people. What about the smaller languages, in terms of the numbers
of speakers/signers. As we know, most of the world's languages are spoken
by relatively few people. The median number of speakers of a language
is probably around 5-6,000 (Posey 1997). There are just under 80 languages
with more than 10 million speakers, together accounting for far over
4 billion people, according to the Ethnologue, 14th edition. Fewer than
300 languages are spoken by communities of 1 million speakers and above,
meaning that over 95% of the world's spoken languages have fewer than
1 million native users. A quarter of the world's spoken languages and
most of the Sign languages have fewer than 1,000 users, and at least
some 500 languages had in 1999 under 100 speakers (Ethnologue, 13th
edition). Some 83-84% of the world's languages are endemic: they exist
in one country only (Harmon 1995). Table 10. Basic information about languages
It is unnecessary here to say that languages are today
being murdered faster than ever before in human history - all of us
know the prognoses by Krauss, Wurm and others (e.g. Krauss 1992, Krauss
1995, Wurm, ed., 2001). Since it is already a decade since Krauss presented
his first prognosis in Language in 1992, it should already be possible
to check to what extent the trends that he discussed have materialised.
But to my knowledge, nobody has even tried to check. Of course, since
we do not have the exact benchmark data or today's data, even following
what is happening would largely be based on guesswork - but at least
we should try. Again, our responsibility. Even if the red lists for
threatened animals and plants (see Table 11) do not receive enough financial
support to be accurate, the red books for threatened languages (Table
12) are in a much worse situation - they are for the most part being
kept by individuals, as a labour of love, with next to no resources.
Even so, the categories for endangerment are constantly being developed
further (see, e.g., the categories used in Wurm, ed., 2001, 14, 53;
see also the discussions about the criteria in Skutnabb-Kangas 2000a,
sections 1.3 and 2.3.2). Table 11. Red lists for threatened animals and plants
Table 12. Red books for threatened languages
The education of indigenous peoples and minorities in large parts of the world is today being organised in direct contradiction of our best scientific knowledge of how it should be organised, and so is the education of both minorities and numerically large but politically dominated groups in most African and many Asian countries (see Skutnabb-Kangas 2000a for details in the claims; see Brock-Utne 1999 and Prah 1995a and b, for Africa, and references to Pattanayak and Rahman in the bibliography for Asia). Most of this education participates in committing linguistic and cultural genocide, according to Articles II (e) and (b) of the UN International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (E793, 1948): Article II(e), 'forcibly transferring children of the
group to another group'; and Likewise, most minority education is guilty of linguistic genocide according to the UN 1948 special definition : Article III(1) 'Prohibiting the use of the language of the group in daily intercourse or in schools, or the printing and circulation of publications in the language of the group'. Assimilationist submersion education where indigenous and minority children are taught through the medium of dominant languages, causes mental harm and often leads to the students using the dominant language with their own children later on, i.e. over a generation or two the children are linguistically and often in other ways too forcibly transferred to a dominant group. This happens to millions of speakers of threatened languages all over the world. There are no schools or classes teaching the children through the medium of the threatened indigenous or minority languages. The transfer to the majority language speaking group is not voluntary: alternatives do not exist, and parents do not have enough reliable information about the long-term consequences of the various choices. Because of this, we are NOT talking about 'language suicide', even if it might at first seem like the speakers are themselves abandoning their languages. 'Prohibition' can be direct or indirect. If there are no minority teachers in the pre-schools/schools and if the minority languages are not used as the main media of education, the use of these languages is indirectly prohibited in daily intercourse/in schools, i.e. it is a question of linguistic genocide. Most of this prohibition is today more sophisticated than the earlier physical punishment for speaking the mother tongue (see Skutnabb-Kangas 2000a for hundreds of examples of all types of prohibition). Most children obviously want in their own interest to learn the official language of a country and mostly also to learn English if it is not one of the official languages. But learning new languages, including the dominant languages should not happen subtractively, but additively, in addition to their own languages. Formal education which is subtractive, i.e. which teaches children something of a dominant language at the cost of their first language, is genocidal. Next I shall give some examples of linguistic genocide in education in various parts of the world. My latest book Linguistic genocide in education - or worldwide diversity and human rights? (2000) provides hundreds of examples of the prohibition, the harm it causes, and the forcible transfer (see also, e.g. Baugh 2000, Cummins 1996, 2000, Kouritzin 1999, Lowell & Devlin 1999, I. Martin 2000a, b, Williams 1998, Wong Fillmore 1991). 4.2. Examples of linguistic genocide in education 4.2.2. Africa In both countries there were huge differences in the results in English between urban and rural children, meaning English language results are socially not enhancing democracy. Likewise, there were big gender differences, meaning English language results do not support gender equality. Many of the Zambian pupils could not even be tested in the local language because they could not read it. On the other hand, when the Malawi children were tested in the local language, there were almost no differences between urban and rural pupils, or between the genders. Large numbers of Zambian pupils are claimed to 'have very weak or zero reading competence in two languages' (ibid., 62). The 'Malawian success in teaching reading in the local language', on the other hand, is achieved despite the almost complete absence of books and classes with an average of around 100 pupils, many of which are taught in the open' (ibid., 62). We often hear that there is no money for teaching in the many languages, in Africa or Asia . Echoing Indian evidence (e.g., Pattanayak 1988, 1991), Williams concludes that [the] moral of the Malawian achievement would appear to be that if resources are scarce, there is a greater likelihood of success in attempting to teach pupils a known local language, rather than an unknown one' (ibid., 62). Since between 74 to 89% of the children in grades 3-6 are judged as not adequately comprehending a text in English that is judged to be at their level (ibid., 63), 'it is likely that they cannot understand their content subject course books' (ibid., 63), and therefore it is 'difficult to see how the majority of pupils in Zambia and Malawi could learn other subjects successfully through reading in English' (ibid., 63). Teaching through an African language thus produces more democracy and equality, whereas using a foreign language as the measure of status and as a medium of education harms the children and also society as a whole. Williams concludes that [f]or the majority of children in both countries the test results, and classroom observations, suggest there is a clear risk that the policy of using English as a vehicular language may contribute to stunting, rather than promoting, academic and cognitive growth' (ibid., 63-64; emphasis added). Zubeida Desai's 2001 study with Xhosa-speaking grade 4 and 7 learners in South Africa shows similar results. They were given a set of pictures which they had to put in the right order and then describe, in both Xhosa and English. In Desai's words, it showed 'the rich vocabulary children have when they express themselves in Xhosa and the poor vocabulary they have when they express themselves in English' (ibid., 321). The Pan South African Language Board (where Desai has since 1996 been a member and the Chair; she is currently the Deputy Chair) argued in March 1999, criticising the Government, that 'African learners are not likely to receive quality education if they are not able to access knowledge equitably. The board further argued that a more pedagogically sound approach would be to enable all learners to write their examinations in their primary languages' (ibid., 337-338; see also other references to Desai in the bibliography). Kathleen Heugh showed in a study (2000b; see also other references to her in the bibliography; likewise references to Alexander) that the percentage of Black students who passed their exams went down every time the number of years spent through the medium of the mother tongues decreased. All these studies fit the UN genocide definition of 'causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group'. The studies confirm a pattern in many postcolonial contexts. World Bank policy employs a rhetoric of endorsing local languages, but funding exclusively strengthens European languages (Mazrui 1997; see also Punchi 2001). The Papua New Guinea example mentioned later (Klaus, in press) is a real exception to this. 4.2.3. Australia 4.2.4. USA and Canada 4.2.5. Deaf students
On the other hand, Arlene Stairs has shown that 'in schools
which support initial learning of Inuttitut, and whose grade 3 and Grade
4 pupils are strong writers in Inuttitut, the results in written English
are also the highest.' (1994, quoted in I. Martin 2000b: 60; see also
her 1988). 5. The human rights system does not prevent linguistic genocide We have already stated earlier that mother tongue medium education should be a basic linguistic human right (LHR). But international and European binding Covenants, Conventions and Charters give very little support to linguistic human rights in education (e.g. Skutnabb-Kangas & Phillipson 1994). Language gets in them a much poorer treatment than other central human characteristics. Often language disappears completely in binding educational paragraphs, for instance, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) where the paragraph on education (26) does not refer to language at all. Similarly, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (adopted in 1966 and in force since 1976), having mentioned language on a par with race, colour, sex, religion, etc. in its general Article (2.2), does explicitly refer to 'racial, ethnic or religious groups' in its educational Article (13.1). However, here it omits reference to language or linguistic groups: ... education shall enable all persons to participate effectively in a free society, promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations and all racial, ethnic or religious groups ... (emphasis added). When language IS in educational paragraphs of human rights instruments, the Articles dealing with education, especially the right to mother tongue medium education, are more vague and/or contain many more opt-outs and modifications than any other Articles (see, e.g., Benson et al. (eds) 1998, May 2001, Kontra et al., eds, 1999; Phillipson & Skutnabb-Kangas, 1994, 1995, 1996; Skutnabb-Kangas, 1996a, b, 1999, 2000a; b, Skutnabb-Kangas & Phillipson, 1994, 1997, 1998, de Varennes 1996). Only one of the many possible examples will be presented of how language in education gets a different treatment from everything else (see Skutnabb-Kangas 2000a, Chapter 7, for others). In the UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities from 1992 (adopted by the General Assembly in December 1992), most of the Articles use the obligating formulation 'shall' and have few let-out modifications or alternatives - except where linguistic rights in education are concerned. Compare the unconditional formulation in Article 1 about identity, with the education Article 4.3: 1.1. States shall protect the existence and the national
or ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic identity of minorities
within their respective territories, and shall encourage conditions
for the promotion of that identity. 1.3. States should take appropriate measures so that, wherever possible, persons belonging to minorities have adequate opportunities to learn their mother tongue or to have instruction in their mother tongue. (emphases added, 'obligating' in italics, 'opt-outs' in bold). The same types of formulation as in Art. 4.3 abound even in the latest HRs instruments. All the formulations below come from the Council of Europe Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, both in force since 1998. According to them, minority languages and sometimes even their speakers MIGHT 'as far as possible', and 'within the framework of [the State's] education systems', get some vaguely defined rights, 'appropriate measures', or 'adequate opportunities', 'if there is sufficient demand' and 'substantial numbers' or 'pupils who so wish in a number considered sufficient' or 'if the number of users of a regional or minority language justifies it'. The Articles covering medium of education are so heavily qualified that the minority is completely at the mercy of the state (see also Thornberry 1997). It is clear that the opt-outs and alternatives in the Convention and the Charter permit a reluctant state to meet the requirements in a minimalist way, which it can legitimate by claiming that a provision was not 'possible' or 'appropriate', or that numbers were not 'sufficient' or did not 'justify' a provision, or that it 'allowed' the minority to organise teaching of their language as a subject, at their own cost. Still, the human rights system should protect people in the globalisation process rather than giving market forces free range. Human rights, especially economic and social rights, are, according to human rights lawyer Katarina Tomaševski (1996: 104), to act as correctives to the free market. The first international human rights treaty abolished slavery. Prohibiting slavery implied that people were not supposed to be treated as market commodities. ILO (The International Labour Organisation) has added that labour should not be treated as a commodity. But price-tags are to be removed from other areas too. Tomaševski claims (ibid., 104) that The purpose of international human rights law is ... to overrule the law of supply and demand and remove price-tags from people and from necessities for their survival. These necessities for survival include not only basic
food and housing (which would come under economic and social rights),
but also basics for the sustenance of a dignified life, including basic
civil, political and cultural rights. It should, therefore, be in accordance
with the spirit of human rights to grant people full linguistic human
rights. Of course the rights need to be binding, there must be a duty-holder,
and both a monitoring system and a proper complaint system need to be
in place, with some kind of penalties for non-compliance.
Table 13. Plants people consume 
The remaining crop diversity (already low) is eroding at 1-2% and livestock breeds at 5% per annum (Christie &Moonie 1999: 321). 'Almost all farmers' knowledge of plants and research systems [something that has been built up during the 12,000 years of agriculture, Thrupp 1999: 318] could become extinct within one or two generations' (Christie/Moonie 1999: Table 7.5). Likewise, 'almost all local knowledge of medicinal plants and systems as well as the plants themselves could disappear within one generation' (ibid.). 'Rainforests are coming down at a rate of 0.9 percent per annum and the pace is picking up. Much of the earth's remaining diversity could be gone within one or two generations' (ibid.). Figures for the disappearance of biodiversity in general are available from dozens of sources (see the websites in Table 11 for links).
If we disregard the cumulative effect and do a simplified calculation, according to the 'pessimistic realistic' prognosis, then, 20% of the biological species we have today might be dead in the year 2100, in hundred years' time. According to the 'optimistic realistic' prognosis the figure would be 2%. ). Optimistic estimates, then, state that 2% of biological species but 50% of languages may be dead (or moribund) in a 100 years' time. Pessimistic estimates are that 20% of biological species but 90% of languages may be dead (or moribund) in a 100 years' time (Table 14). Table 14. Prognoses for 'dead' or 'moribund' species and languages
Since the first research-based prognoses of the speed
of disappearance of languages appeared a decade ago (in the journal
Language; see Krauss 1992), it would already be possible to get some
idea of the validity of the estimates if the figures we have about the
number of languages were more reliable - but, alas, they are not. 6.3. Correlational relationships between biodiversity and linguistic and cultural diversity But what is the relevance of this information? Firstly,
linguistic and cultural diversity on the one hand and biodiversity on
the other hand are correlated - where one type is high, often the other
one is too, and vice versa. Secondly, some of the main causes for the
disappearance of biodiversity that have been identified are habitat
destruction, for instance through logging, spread of agriculture, use
of pesticides, and the poor economic and political situation of the
people who live in the world's most diverse ecoregions. What most people
do not know is that disappearance of languages may also be or become
a very important causal factor in the destruction of biodiversity. Table 15. Endemism in languages and higher vertebrates: a comparison of the top 25 countries
Harmon gets the same results with flowering plants and languages, butterflies and languages, birds and languages, etc. - a high correlation between countries with biological and linguistic megadiversity (see also Harmon, in press, Maffi et al., in press). Table 16 shows more of the correlations. The figures for languages are derived by Harmon from the Ethnologue, 12th edition, and for vertebrates from Groombridge 1992; the countries which are on the top lists for endemism for both vertebrates and languages are still bolded and capitalized. The list ranks countries not in terms of all languages but according to the number of endemic languages. Remember that endemic languages represent the vast majority (some 83-84 percent) of the world's languages. As can be seen, Papua New Guinea, which ranks first in terms of endemic languages, is country number 13 in terms of endemic vertebrates. The USA is number 11 on both the languages and the vertebrates list. On the other hand, Nigeria is number 3 on the languages list but is not among the 25 top countries for any of the biological species diversity indicators used here. Still, the correlations are very high indeed. Table 16. Endemism in Languages Compared with Rankings of Biodiversity
Today it is safe to say that there is no 'pristine nature'
left - all landscapes have been and are influenced by human action,
even those where untrained observers might not notice it immediately.
All landscapes are cultural landscapes. Likewise, local nature and people's
detailed knowledge about it and use of it have influenced the cultures,
languages and cosmo-visions of the people who have been dependent on
it for their sustenance. This relationship between all kinds of diversities
is of course what most indigenous peoples have always known, and they
describe their knowledge in several articles in the UNEP volume. Much of the accusations have to do with lack of interdisciplinary knowledge - most linguists do not know enough about present-day biology to be able to see what the biological metaphors and the claims of a causal relationship stand for. I have deconstructed the attacking claim a bit, with arguments from David Harmon, in another paper (Skutnabb-Kangas, in press b) but will here only say that much of the misunderstanding has to do with linguists not being able 'to distinguish Social Darwinism (which of course has long since been discredited […] from neo-Darwinism as it is now understood by evolutionary biologists' (Harmon, email in March 2001). Evolution is undirected, it 'does not, cannot, aim to produce anything'. Evolutionary 'fitness' has nothing to do with hierarchies; biologists do not and cannot claim that any species is more 'primitive' or more worth than another. 'A biological organism is "fit" simply if it fits into its ecological community and functions therein. If conditions change radically, and it no longer fits into the community, it will probably go extinct (note that there is no hint of "should" or predestination).' Harmon's conclusion is: Now the crux of the question as [the attacker] applies it in [his/her] quote above, is: what does it mean to say that "primitive" languages are "unable to adapt to the modern world"? We know that it DOES NOT mean that they couldn't adapt linguistically; it is the consensus among linguists, is it not, that any language has the internal resources to cope with extralinguistic change and innovation, of whatever scope, IF there were no (extrinsic, non-linguistic) sociopolitical pressures on it. That condition is perfect "fitness" in the strict Darwinian sense. [The attacker], like so many others, is not distinguishing between this un-teleological, evolutionary condition and the radically different, non-evolutionary, volitional processes of socio-political change that are the real causes rendering languages "unable to adapt to the modern world". A giveaway: note the tag phrase "deserve their fate": from fitness we have segued to a declaration of (1) morality, as in just desserts, and (2) fate, as in predestination. An impermissible leap, if the two distinct senses are left undistinguished. These thoughts are a lead-in to my second argument, creativity. In my view, evolutionary biologists' arguments are extremely useful when debating the 'fitness' of the world's small languages as languages of teaching and learning, or languages of administration. In addition to clarifying the major argument about the need to maintain biodiversity and thus indirectly the need to maintain linguistic diversity, they also give us support for the creativity argument. What in the discipline of biology is discussed in terms of 'fitness', can be discussed in terms of human creativity and adaptability and their relationship to language (Table 17). Table 17. Definitions of fitness - Applying evolutionary biologists' definitions of
fitness Homogenisation harms 'fitness' while diversity is a prerequisite for it and enhances it. 7. The creativity and multilingualism argument 7.1. Knowledge and ideas - the main commodities produced in an information society In industrial societies, the main items produced were
commodities and, in a later phase, services. In industrial societies
the ones who did well were those who controlled access to raw materials
and owned the other prerequisites and means of production. When we move
ahead to an information society proper, the main 'commodities' produced
are knowledge and ideas. These are mainly transmitted through language(s)
(and visual images). In this kind of information society, or "knowledge
society" as it has also been called, those with access to diverse
knowledges, diverse information and ideas, will do well, the creativity
argument claims. Bi- and multilinguals tend to be superior to monolinguals in having more flexible, more alert minds and a greater and quicker thinking capacity on the basis of a much greater volume of memory which they have for mastering two (or in the case of multilinguals more than two) different language systems with different vocabularies, grammars, sound structures and idiomatic expressions. Bi- and multilingualism from very early childhood onwards, to be maintained past the age of six years, is the most advantageous quality any person can possess (Wurm 2001: 15). And in describing the "intellectual and emotional advantages of bi- or multilingualism and biculturalism" (ibid., 22), Wurm claims the following :
In an information society, those parts of the world will
do well where multilingualism has been and is the norm, even among people
with no or little formal education, and where there is a rich linguistic
and cultural diversity, embodying diverse knowledges. The countries
with mega-diversities have had more various micro-environments to observe,
analyse, describe and discuss than countries with less diversity, and
all of these knowledges have been encoded in their many languages. They
have in this sense access to more varied knowledges, ideas, and cosmovisions
than countries with few languages and cultures. Getting return on investment
for supporting multilingualism presupposes that the multilinguals in
these countries get access to exchanging and refining these knowledges
- which they may, in a thoroughly wired satellite- and chip-driven global
society. This presupposes in most cases linguistically additive education,
initially (minimally for the first 6-8 years) through the medium of
the mother tongue, even for numerically small groups. Thus linguistic
human rights in education build on and produce not only local linguistic
and cultural capital but knowledge capital that is exchangeable to other
types of capital. In this sense, Europe, with only 3% of the world's
oral languages, is poor, whereas, for instance, Africa is rich - provided
that the linguistic and cultural diversity and biodiversity are maintained,
rather than destroyed (see, e.g. Adegbija 2001, Afolayan 1978, 1984,
Bamgbose 1991). "Ecological diversity is essential for long-term
planetary survival. All living organisms, plants, animals, bacteria
and humans survive and prosper through a network of complex and delicate
relationships. Damaging one of the elements in the ecosystem will result
in unforeseen consequences for the whole of the system. Evolution has
been aided by genetic diversity, with species genetically adapting in
order to survive in different environments. Diversity contains the potential
for adaptation. Uniformity can endanger a species by providing inflexibility
and unadaptability. Linguistic diversity and biological diversity are
… inseparable. The range of cross fertilisation becomes less as
languages and cultures die and the testimony of human intellectual achievement
is lessened. If we during the next 100 years murder 50-90% of the linguistic
(and thereby mostly also the cultural) diversity which is our treasury
of historically developed knowledge, and includes knowledge about how
to maintain and use sustainably some of the most vulnerable and most
biologically diverse environments in the world, we are also seriously
undermining our chances of life on earth.
How is all this relevant for teachers of English? Can
we not predict that at least, or maybe even especially, those who know
English will be in a secure position in the future, because of this
language competence? Firstly, monolingual English speakers will lose out economically,
and not only economically. As I have often said, we multilinguals may
in a hundred years' time show voluntarily English-monolinguals (those
who could have learned other languages but chose not to) in pathological
museums. It is tragic that there are Asian and African elites who fool
themselves and consciously or subconsciously strive for belonging to
this category of dinosaurs, and are even proud of it. Thirdly, multilinguals. Grin also argues that those with only good English plus their mother tongue will get fewer chances (and less Return On Investment, ROI) than high level MULTIlinguals. This is especially true for those whose mother tongue is not one of the 'big' other-than-English ones. That means that English-German and E-French bilinguals will manage still for a while when E-Danish or E-Finnish or E-Romansch or English-Yoruba bilinguals would already be out. In the new century, high levels of multilingualism will be a prerequisite for many high-level and/or high-salary jobs, and also for many of the interesting jobs (see García, 1995; García & Otheguy, 1994; Lang, 1993, Rosen et al., 2000), regardless of status and cash. Prognoses from several countries predict that English proficiency, even very high levels, is becoming more and more common (e.g. Graddol, 1997). In fairly few years' time, when Europe, USA and Canada are lesser and lesser economic players globally, as seems likely, even native-like English takes people nowhere - there will be too many people who possess that qualification. High competence in English will be like literacy skills today and computer skills tomorrow (see Rassool 1999; see also Rassool 1998), something that employers see as a self-evident, necessary basic prerequisite, but not sufficient. Other competencies, including competencies in other languages, are needed. Supply and demand theories predict that when many people possess what earlier might have been a scarce commodity, the price goes down. When a relatively high proportion of a country's or region's or the world's population have 'perfect' English skills, the value of these skills as a financial incentive decreases substantially. The Financial Times, 3rd Dec. 2001 reports on a survey
undertaken for the Community of European Management Schools, an alliance
of academia and multinational corporations. The survey concludes that
a company's inability to speak a client's language can lead to failure
to win business because it indicates lack of effort. Nuffield Languages
Enquiry 2000 (www.nuffield.org) concludes: 'English is not enough. We
are fortunate to speak a global language but, in a smart and competitive
world, exclusive reliance on English leaves the UK vulnerable and dependent
on the linguistic competence and the goodwill of others … Young
people from the UK are at a growing disadvantage in the recruitment
market … The UK needs competence in many languages - not just French
- but the education system is not geared to achieve this … The
government has no coherent approach to languages' (from the Executive
Summary Languages: the next generation). The British newspaper The Independent
of 31 May 2001 reported that graduates with foreign language skills
earn more than those who only know English. Professor Tariq Rahman writes that "English-medium
schools [in Pakistan] tend to produce snobs completely alienated from
their culture and languages." Instead, he suggest that ALL English-medium
schools should be abolished, and "English should be taught as a
language to all children so that it is no longer the sole possession
of the elite." Rahman, who is himself "a product of the English-medium
school" believes, however, "that we are mentally colonialized
and alienated from our cultures if all we know is in English. At the
moment we have English -medium schools for the elite of wealth and power
(military mostly); Urdu-medium schools for the common people; and madrassas
for very poor children. In short, English is a device which restricts
the entry of the poor and the less powerless into the ranks of the elite.
My idea is to encourage not only Urdu but also Sindhi, Pashto, Punjabi
and Balochi at least so that people become additive multilinguals and
get some jobs in their own languages. Indeed, English need not be the
language of elitist jobs as it is at the moment" (from an email
13 February, quoted with permission; see also Rahman 1996, 1999, 2000,
2002).
Table 18. Number of directions of interpretation in the European Union with X number of languages
This type of argument obviously makes language rights
activists seem like stupid, unrealistic romantics. It is not cost-effective,
and, knowing the limitations of interpretation and translation, even
at the highest levels (see Piron, 1994, 1996; see also Phillipson's
review of the former, 1997), it is not efficient; we do not get out
enough of our investment, so the argument goes. Table 19. Communication (physical or mental) as exchange of commodities or ideas
A general conclusion is that while the costs for physical communications are enormous, the ROI (return on investment) low and negative (except for TNCs, transnational companies), the rationale for much of the movement of commodities non-existent, except for market capitalism, and the effects for equity and peace negative, the costs for mental communications are relatively much lower, the ROI much higher (also for some TNCs, like Microsoft or Nokia) and with few side-effects and the rationale a positive one for peace and democracy (on this, see, e.g. Sachs, ed., 1992; Galtung, 1996). My first plea to you is: please count the costs of communications through moving commodities, including people, and through exchanging ideas, and compare! In order to translate some of this conclusion to the language of economics, I will link the discussion of cost to the concepts externalities and internalities. 7.3.2. Externalities and internalities as factors in cost-effectiveness In mainstream economics, internalities are the costs that are routinely counted in the price of a product, while externalities are costs which can be seen as possible side-effects, long-term effects (like environmental pollution which is not counted in the costs of a car). Externalities are today not only not counted as costs which the consumer should pay; they are often not mentioned or not even known. When people start demanding compensation from cigarette factories for their lung cancer, for instance, these costs which so far have been externalities, may soon become internalities and be counted in the price, making the cost of cigarettes higher. If we apply these concepts to various aspects of communications, it seems clear that the externalities for physical communication are growing so rapidly in terms of the environmental costs that it will be necessary to support mental communications to a much larger extent. Chips and ideas weigh little and their travel causes little pollution, as compared to raw materials, oil, food, clothing, machines. In rational communication, ideas should travel globally, with the help of additive multilingualism and translation and interpretation, while most of the production of commodities and energy should be done locally, for local needs. It is total craziness that food on the average American table has traveled 2000 miles (Lehman & Krebs 1996: 122), or that people in Denmark buy Californian apples or New Zealand lamb or Kenyan cut flowers, or their pigs are fed Brazilian or Argentinean soy bean flour. And at least, if this still happens, we who benefit should pay the real price, meaning the externalities should be internalized, counted in the price. But for rational communication to be effective, in terms of ROI, local and global mental communication and the free exchange of ideas must be optimal . Since people receive, reflect on, exchange and create ideas most optimally in languages they know, local languages and thus linguistic diversity are necessary for cost-effective communication. This might be the only way in which the disastrous economic theories about 'comparative advantage' (everybody should produce what they are good at - see Lehman & Krebs 1996 for a critique) do work - using local languages definitely is a comparative advantage. The cost involved in people not understanding the messages (also in education) and not being able to fully utilize their potential and creativity, are enormous, as, for instance, many African and Indian scholars have repeatedly pointed out (e.g. Pattanayak, 1986, 1988, 1991; Prah, 1995a, b). From a communications cost point of view, then, when externalities are internalized, languages are our most cost-effective communication tools. We can go further and also apply the concepts to language maintenance and linguistic human rights (LHRs). In relation to linguistic majorities, (or dominant groups in general), externalities are today mostly left as externalities, i.e. not counted in the costs that majorities cause. More specifically, the costs for the protection of their LHRs, their chances to use their own languages everywhere, are often not even mentioned, let alone counted - and we others pay them. It could be said, maybe a bit provocatively, that many of the costs of translation and interpretation are not caused by minorities or indigenous peoples who in most cases are bilingual or multilingual. Especially interpretation costs are, at least in the West, caused by monolinguals, and these are often individuals from linguistic majority populations, for instance North Americans or Brits or Chinese or Russians. Likewise, mostly the costs for language learning, caused by the fact that people need common languages in order to be able to communicate, are not shared evenly. For instance, the teaching of English worldwide is paid for by everybody else but the native English speakers. Still it is their monolingualism that forces all of us others to learn their language while they do not learn our languages. We pay the costs while they benefit, not only by not needing to use time for learning other languages, or not needing to pay the costs for our learning but also in other significant ways. They get direct cash transfers - English teaching is a multibillion dollar business for Britain and the United States. They are in a better negotiating position, because they are able to use their mother tongue while we others have to use a foreign or second language (I am here using my fifth language in terms of order of learning). They can concentrate more on content and less on form when using the mother tongue. In research, they dominate "international" journals (look at the editorial boards of a few…) and conferences. And so on. They benefit, we pay. There are many novel methods teaching people to become fairly rapidly receptively competent in several languages (see e.g. Klein & Stegmann 2000), but it does not seem so far that many English-only speakers have shown much interest. On the other hand, when counting what is cost-effective in relation to minorities (or other dominated groups/peoples), externalities are often counted as costs, i.e. internalised, and they are certainly not shared. This is what enables some people to draw the conclusion that the granting of (linguistic) human rights to us (including the maintenance of the languages of minorities and indigenous peoples, and proper L2 learning where teachers are bilingual) is not cost-effective. On the other hand, the cost of not granting LHRs is also treated as an externality or not even mentioned. Wrong economics prevail over human rights and the future of the planet. The political decisions about this are in most cases not made in democratic ways (even if democracy were only defined as majority rule plus minority protection, e.g. Tomaševski , in press, 5; see other references to Tomaševski in the bibliography for brilliant and courageous analyses on human rights and education). My second plea to you is: when discussing costs, please count in the externalities, and see what is most cost-effective when the externalities are shared. But to sum up the conclusions from the biodiversity argument and the creativity and cost arguments, we can use the new paradigm of ecosystem health. The general conclusion here is that we cannot afford NOT to maintain and support linguistic diversity.
Ecosystem health is an emerging discipline with the purpose
to develop theories, methods and practical tools for assessing, monitoring
and improving society's ability to sustain Earth's life support systems
(see Rapport and Wilcox in the bibliography for the concept of ecosystem
health). Traditional research and practice in the area of the environment-human
nexus has mainly concentrated on the effects of air, water and soil
pollution and other toxins on human health (ibid.). We can speak of
an earlier concept of health where health was seen as absence of illness,
as negative health. The WHO's (World Health Organisation) defined already
in 1948 health as "a state of complete physical, mental and social
well-being". This is in sociological terms positive health, not
only not being ill but feeling positively good and healthy. To the positive
health definition, the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment
(2002) has recently added "ecological". Health is "a
state of complete physical, mental, social and ecological well-being".
They state that our health ultimately depends on the health of the ecosystem
of which we humans are a part (ibid.). The human acts that killed all these people, in the US as well as in Afghanistan and Iraq and globally, are ultimately based on the unequal power relationships in the world, on various unproductive reactions to poverty and unfairness. As long as we poison our physical environment with toxins and poison our socio-political and economic environment with unnecessary poverty for some and unethical over-consumption for others, coupled with unequal power relations, our ecosystem is far from reaching even negative health. There are other equally devastating indicators of ecosystem
illness. I shall only run through a few of them. Most of the data come
from the World Health Organisation (http://www.who/). - 60% of diseases resulting from acute respiratory infections, Table 21. Unnecessary hardship: symptom of ecosystem illness Of the 4,4 billion people in the underdeveloped countries
(=countries that are consciously underdeveloped, by their own &
Western elites), - 20% of children do not attend school through grade
5. Table 22. Unnecessary hardship - lack of food - 800 million people are chronically malnourished, Unnecessary pollution continues even if we have the technology
and the means to prevent it (719): Table 23. Unnecessary pollution continues - and it costs… - 90-95% of sewage and 70% of industrial wastes are dumped
untreated into surface waters in underdeveloped countries where they
pollute the water supply, These costs in terms of unnecessarily lost lives, and in terms of all the military costs and domestic intelligence and control costsare being paid to uphold what is falsely called democracy and the free world, meaning for upholding the ethically unacceptable division of power in the world. They have been legitimated as some kind of necessary costs for fighting terrorism, even if they fight it in ways which can only increase causes for terrorism. They have not been counted in as costs of upholding poisoning systems. They have not been internalized but are even in the best case being treated as externalities, and often not even seen as connected to their purpose. Instead of being seen as unnecessary costs which are already ruining our planet, they are legitimated through a smoke screen of lies. If the lives of the fewer than 3,000 people killed on September 11th are so precious that billions of dollars can be used to prevent it from happening again, so should the lives of all the others be who continue to die and suffer unnecessarily. The war on terrorism should be directed towards preventing all those unnecessary deaths and the unnecessary hardship and pollution and poverty. But instead what is called war on terrorism seems to have other goals and these goals are the topic of the last part of my talk today. 8.2. Farewell to good governance, states based on the rule of law, and human rights? I said at the beginning of my talk that last year has seen more decisions being made that negatively affect the health of the whole ecosystem than any other year in the history of the planet. Now I come back to this claim. I give a short description of in what ways the last year has taken us closer to the catastrophe that we are facing. The last decade has seen the negative unprecedented spread of and domination by what some people might believe is an economic theory, namely the neo-liberal ideology of the so called "free markets". These neo-liberal market-based economies have added to the hardships of billions of people. "Free markets" have nothing to do with economic theories and everything to do with an ideological mantra, repeated ad nauseam. These markets are of course all but free. Just a couple of examples. As the director of the Third
World Network, Martin Khor from Malaysia, says (in an interview from
Porto Alegre in the Danish daily Information 4. February 2002), when
the Western countries give one billion dollars per day in subsidies
to their agriculture, how can one speak of competition on equal premises.
Or how can Uganda, with 250,000 people working with sugar canes, compete,
when the customs tariffs for sugar are 151% in the USA, 175% in Europe,
and 278% in Japan, whereas Uganda can place only a customs tariff of
25% on commodities imported from other countries, and the Bretton Woods
institutions (The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund) would
like the figure to be still lower. Is this a "free" market?.
But there were some positive developments, at least on paper and to
some extent also in practice. "Suddenly, in the name of a supposed 'just war' against
terrorism, all this has been forgotten", Ramonet claims (ibid.).
"Values that only yesterday were regarded as fundamental have disappeared
from the political landscape, and democratic countries took steps backwards
in human rights and international law" (ibid.). I use the United
States as an example, but similar developments on a serious but less
drastic scale are happening elsewhere. Secondly, traditionally, good governance and democracy meant separating the three powers, the legislative, judicial and executive branches of government. The laws are to be passed by democratically elected parliaments like the US Congress; the courts are to be independent and follow laws enacted by Congress, with fai |
