Global Language

Catalog description

A handful of languages - English, French, Spanish, and in some regions Russian, Arabic and Mandarin - are becoming 'world languages', used internationally and widely acquired as additional languages. Since human communities always develop some common medium of communication, this reflects the emergence of wider transnational or global communities. But it also reflects and ratifies disparities of power, conferring great privilege to the nations and native speakers of the world languages, and disadvantage to non-speakers. What are the implications of linguistic imperialism for the other six thousand or so human languages, and the billions of people who do not speak a world language? Many minority languages are losing speakers and becoming endangered or extinct. Educational failure and economic exclusion are widespread among those compelled to function in an unfamiliar world language. This course explores the processes and consequences of linguistic imperialism. We discuss issues of language maintenance and shift, language politics, multilingual education, and linguistic human rights. We examine the tension between the utilitarian role of language in enabling communication with an ever-wider community, and its powerful social role as an expression of culture and of community and personal identity.