Language in the world: properties and powers
Debates about global and threatened languages
A brief summary will have to suffice as a basis for the analysis which follows. Several writers have recently drawn attention to the fact that English teaching can be understood as not simply a pedagogic exchange, but rather as an international commodity with a massive turnover (Pennycook 1994b; Phillipson 1992; Tollefson 1991). The charge has been levelled against those involved in applied linguistics and English Language Teaching that they have, wittingly or not, been exporting their language and culture at the expense of indigenous languages and cultures. This process has been labelled 'linguistic imperialism', and is associated with 'linguicism', defined as 'ideologies and structures where language is the means for effecting or maintaining an unequal allocation of power and resources' (Phillipson 1992: 55). A parallel concern is with the recognition that, while the number of speakers of English is rapidly rising, the numbers of speakers of many other languages are dropping at a similar rate, with the result that approximately two languages a month cease to be spoken by anyone and are thus considered extinct. The processes which 'kill' a language may involve the deaths of its speakers or the prohibition of its use, giving rise to terms such as 'linguistic genocide' and 'linguicide', and, in respect of resistance to these processes, linguistic human rights' and 'language rights'. A third strand in the debate is the equivalence claimed between the loss of linguistic diversity and the loss of biodiversity as threats to the well-being of the entire planet.
While participants in these debates hold a range of views, their positions share some assumptions about the nature of language and about the relationship between language and agency. These assumptions are not always made explicit, and a series of metaphors, analogies and rhetorical devices has been deployed in this discourse, some of which obscure ontological claims which we believe are important.
