The place of encounter

Even though languages are spoken by individuals, it is in speech communities that languages survive or die. Members of ethnolinguistic communities shift from their old language to a new language and

finally abandon the old ethnic tongue.

On account of individual shifts, by urban elites or by speech communities in a diaspora, no languages die. And not all languages have died in shifting speech communities. Some have disappeared with the extinction of the entire monolingual community.

The extinction of ethnic languages in most cases results from a complete shift of an entire speech community. Some languages, however, “survive” the language shift in certain domains.

Unwritten minority languages may be employed in ritual contexts or as secret languages, but their use is rarely limited to such domains. Functional shifts in language use patterns reduce minority languages in most cases to being employed at least within the family and/or the old members of the

community.

Language use patterns and language competence, as attitudes towards languages, differ within speech communities. Speech communities are not monolithic structures. Language loyalty, the most important language attitude with regard to the survival of minority languages, may be

associated with old people, women, intellectuals, conservatives, leading figures, etc. It makes a big difference whether an isolated circle of intellectuals or politicians try to revive the language of an

ethnolinguistic minority or a widely accepted group of, for example, religious leaders. Variations of language use and attitudes have to be investigated within the speech communities. The distribution can be based on subsections with regard to generations, gender, levels of education, mobility, etc.

The setting

The sociopolitical environment of ethnolinguistic minorities provides the components from which the package of reasons and motives for the actual language displacement is compiled. It also accounts for

the mode of the language shift. Some shifts reflect a voluntary decision to abandon a language, whereas others are the result of coercion. However, in the vast majority of cases we find a mixture of these two scenarios, which means neither “language suicide” nor “language murder” New value systems penetrate into communities, and social, economic, and ideological pressures have encroaching effects on the basis of language loyalty within the speech community itself.

Complete language shift is not a new phenomenon in the

history of mankind. There must always have been speech communities which gave up their mother tongue, either by force from dominant groups or deliberately in the process of assimilating to dominant groups for reasons such as gaining prestige or materialistic benefits.

The environment of each language shift is specific and changes through the ongoing process.

Depending on the sociohistorical horizon of a certain ethno-linguistic minority, as well as on the kind

of approach from outside, the relevant social setting for a shift might be a modern state within the

global setting, an imperial expansion, or a limited, regional context. Even with similar social environments, no two language contact situations are alike, and no two language shifts resemble each other.

Three categories in which language displacement occurs can be distinguished: regional, imperial, and global settings.

Even though imperial settings prevailed during the colonial period, settings of that kind had existed before and still exist today, though on a much smaller scale. The three categories

should therefore not be understood as successive periods in a chronological sense, but as contexts which are characterized by common features in the environment of language contact.

Regional settings

Ethnolinguistic minorities in regional settings are characterized by a limited sociohistorical horizon. Since “Western” culture spreads throughout most parts of the world and reaches even remote places, regional settings are fast disappearing. No specific information on language shifts in

regional settings in the more distant past is available, and no written records of regional “traditional” shifts exist at all. Therefore one has two

means of illuminating language displacement events which have taken place in the past. First,one can try to reconstruct language history on the basis of modern language situations and, second, one can

study the rare cases of “traditional” shifts which are taking place today.

Studies of present-day shifts in regional settings, suggest that long-term contacts among neighboring groups might have resulted in language displacements for quite different reasons and in various modes. Minorities which had been living in symbiotic relationships with dominant groups for a long time might have been to abandon the old language at some point.

Another traditional setting in which languages have been displaced is the spread of indigenous linguae francae replacing vernaculars.Autochthonous linguae francae were already growing in precolonial times.

Imperial settings

Language displacement in imperial settings is characterized by the fact that the replacing language is the language of intruding powers which regard themselves as superior, and who expand with the ambition to extend their influence into other territories. Conquests motivated by religious conflicts, affected settings of language contact in most parts of the world.

Dominant extraneous powers violated the areas of others; brute force has been a feature commonly found, and in some cases the conquered people ended as the subject of genocide. Epidemic diseases often accompanied the killings, but it is not always clear whether the diseases actually took place or

were just used as an excuse to hide genocide. In most cases, languages died before in the way that their speakers were forced to abandon the old mother tongue and to shift to the language of

the conquerors. Material interest was the leading motivation for many in the invasion of continent, and still today ruthless fortune-hunters in search of gold kill, tolerated by the government.

Today's language situation in South America reflects the history of the indigenous Indian populations in that we do find large numbers of isolated languages. Many Indian languages have disappeared without leaving any linguistic trace, but of others at least ethnonyms or toponyms are known.

Apart from that, some indigenous linguae francae, have spread with

the support of the colonial power at the expense of minority languages.

Only about 10 percent of the Aboriginal people still speak indigenous languages, that is, 30,000 people out of 300,000.

But even the “healthy” languages are threatened by extinction, since the

pressure of “Western culture,” responsible for the death of many Aboriginal languages in the past, is still increasing. Aboriginal languages not only disappeared through assimilation, but also as a result

of massacres and diseases. The future of small speech communities is uncertain mainly because of their small numbers.

Global settings

Today, most language displacements take place in a global setting, in that a modern state provides the environment of ethnolinguistic minorities. The worldwide domination of only a few languages and the speed of their spread is due to modern communication technologies. Physical pressure, dominant in colonial shifts, has been replaced by social and, more important, economic pressure in the global setting.

Many developing countries with a multilingual population regard this linguistic diversity as a threat to national unity and “nation-building.” Supporting ethnic languages is very often seen as supporting separatism. In most developing countries institutional support is restricted to a few dominant languages of national or international distribution, leaving the

majority of indigeneous languages behind.

Today the future of many languages is uncertain not only because their functional range is scaled down. Lack of functional expansion and adaptation is thus a correlate and counterpart of scaled-down use. The expansion of dominant languages is not achieved by physical violence, as described under the imperial category, but by means of spreading ideologies through the mass media and the education

system. The “world economy” demands adjustment and reaches even remote rural areas in developing countries, as “world religions” do. Terms such as westernization, christianization, islamization, modernization, industrialization all point in the same direction, which is reduction of diversity. Assimilation by choice will be the main cause of the worldwide decline of minority languages in the future.

Date: 2016-03-03; view: 772