In this latest installment of Chats in Linguistic Diversity, I talk to Professor Aneta Pavlenko about multilingualism through the ages.
We start from the question whether the world today is more multilingual than it was every before. Spoiler alert: we quickly conclude that no, it is not.
Aneta takes us to one of her favorite multilingual polities, Medieval Palermo. The Normans who conquered Palermo in 1072 ruled trilingually – through Arabic, Greek, and Latin. However, we would be wrong to conclude from this multilingual regime that Norman Palermo was a tolerant and liberal place. Both monolingual and multilingual regimes operate in the service of the state, as evidence from laws, trial proceedings, monuments, or even currency shows throughout the ages.
Petrus de Ebulo, Trilingual scribes in the Kingdom of Sicily (1196)
One of the reasons why the world may seem more multilingual today than in the past lies in the European nationalist project, which culminated in the “population exchanges” of the 20th century – the great “unmixing of peoples”, as Lord Curzon called it.
As a result, languages became associated with nations and this linguistic nationalism continues to guide views of language today. Can linguistic nationalism ever be unthought?
Maybe because languages are now so deeply intertwined with nationalist projects, we have become much more emotional about language and languages than people may have been in the past. This is true even of academic research, where there can be significant pressure to bring our emotions into our research, too.
How to deal with such pressures is another thread that runs through our conversation. We reflect on our own academic careers and what lessons they may or may not hold for early career researchers today.
Further resources
Our conversation accompanies Aneta’s 2021 Einar Hauge Lecture “Does multilingualism need a history?” and the introductory chapter “Multilingualism and history” to her upcoming book devoted to the same topic.
This work is licensed under a
Linguistic nationalism in Vietnam also relates to keeping the “integrity” or “pure-ness” of the Vietnamese language. Since Vietnamese is integrated with Vietnam as a culture, nation, and people, many people (mostly elderly) think that the language should be maintained and embraced. In my opinion, this is a good intention. However, with the recent emergence in foreign languages, culture, and globalization, code-switching or lending words have become more and more common in Vietnamese. Nowadays, most young people would use some English vocabulary in their daily life, some would alter a large portion of their casual lexicon. This has caused a large debate among Vietnamese media, education institutions, and generations. While the conservative side wishes to keep people from using Vietnamese language the traditional way, young people wish to use language freely. I would consider if “unthinking linguistics nationalism” could make people more tolerant to using language freely. When language is considered as a tool (for communication), and less of a representation of national pride that I have to mind.
I think some incredibly important topics were discussed in this interview and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you.
One point that I wish was discussed more is how culture and place are tied to a language and how these aspects of human identity are linked to linguistic nationalism. Certainly, the great unmixing of peoples has caused untold damage to these links. However, I believe linguistic nationalism includes the cultural attitudes and values that are shaped and expressed through the language spoken in each country. Therefore, languages being associated with nations could be a form of protectionism since cultural ideals are not far away from political ideologies and social power. This may have something to do with the modern nation-state acting more as a corporation on the global market. These nation-states have different economic and power structures than the past empires discussed in the interview. I wonder if modern nationalist emotions surrounding a nation’s language is a reaction to this new global power structure.
Thanks, Jeff! You are raising important questions! There is no doubt in my mind that linguistic nationalism can sometimes be counter-hegemonic … just goes to prove the point that almost any generalization about language is meaningless; what we mean by “this is a language and these are its properties” is different not only across history but also across different local contexts.
Dear Ingrid,
Thank you for sharing this podcast. This is a conversation worth thinking about. I have investigated the language phenomenon in China and found that multilingualism is also on the decrease. In the past thirty years, Chinese (Mandarin) in China has risen rapidly and has been used as the main means of communication in employment, education, service, entertainment, and daily conversation. With the implementation of the “Putonghua Promotion Movement” in the 1950s, the status and learning of Tibetan, Uyghur, Mongolian, and Zhuang languages have been threatened. An indirect impact is that the vocabulary of some local languages and minority languages gradually gave way to the corresponding vocabulary in the current Chinese. For example, the pronunciation is getting closer and closer to the Chinese, and a large number of new words are borrowed from the Chinese. In some minority areas, the development of various bilingual education programs may accelerate the rate of language transfer and loss. Some larger ethnic minorities have resisted the language challenges brought about by the spread of Chinese, while some ethnic minorities have caught the opportunity to protect their heritage.
References:
https://theasiadialogue.com/2015/06/12/multilingualism-discourse-and-identity-in-china/
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/288473225_Multilingualism_in_Greater_China_and_the_Chinese_Language_Diaspora
What I enjoyed about is interview with Aneta is the really interdisciplinary nature of the discussion. I often think of linguistics as dealing with current-day topics, but I was particularly intrigued by the discussion of the Norman regime in Palermo and found it really interesting to hear about the primary sources that are used to better understand how this multilingual regime operated. It was fascinating to hear how sources such as administrative documents, charters, trial proceedings etc can tell us so much about how people wrote and spoke and how language shaped power relations in this historical regime.
Thanks for your sharing,
In the past or present, everyone is always willing to learn the new things to make the life better and it is similar to willing to learn new language. The multilingualism gives chance to help people to achieve their goals.
The multilingualism of the present is more than before in the quantity, not in the purpose because language is just a tool in communication. The difference of the past and the present is what language world tent to learn. In the past, the Spanish and French are top, even if English nobleman also learned these languages but now it is changing, English is the top and maybe in the future another language replace for English to become top. In my opinion, multilingualism is great; I’m learning Spanish because it serves for my desiring.
Thanks, Frances! Great to see another language aficionado – I also like to learn languages because I find them endlessly fascinating 🙂
Thanks Ingrid for this podcast.
It made me rethink and reflect about multilingualism. Living in a multicultural society my whole life, I had a very positive view on multilingualism and I thought that it reflected equality of the Australian society. However after listening to Aneta’s view about the nature of multilingualism within an hierarchical language structure. Looking back, I have seen scenes where people look down and devalue Australian residents who are non-English speakers. Learning a second language is difficult in general and for non-english speakers who live in Australia, they would definitely find it difficult to learn English. I think those who speak English should be considerate to people with who don’t speak English and should not position themselves on top of the hierarchy. However scenes like this would happen and will continue happen in the Australia, which conveys the unequal nature of multilingualism.
Thanks for sharing!
In 19th & 20th century China, Hong Kong was a British colony or territory, and the local people had to accept English instead of Chinese, which is one of the reasons for the increase in multilingualism. Because English occupies the most important part of the society in that region, whether in education or politics, people use English a lot. Even now that Hong Kong has returned to Chinese rule, English is still mixed into the conversation. However, under the current development trend of the whole region, the benefits of multilingualism outweigh its disadvantages, and the attitude of any nation toward multilingualism has also changed greatly.While the world is no more multilingual than it has ever been, who knows what may happen years from now.
The language of a country is inextricably linked to the political and economic domain of society. As Aneta states in the lecture, the different languages have their own place on the Rosetta Stone, which reflects the linguistic order of the society of the time, a social reality and also the hierarchical relationship between languages. This reflects the will of the rulers. A certain linguistic order exists in any community that is not monolingual, in a country or even in the international community. Even in more monolingual communities or countries there is a hierarchical relationship between the official language and the dialects, for example, in China the official language is Chinese, or Mandarin; at the same time there are different dialects in different parts of the country, such as Cantonese, Hokkien, Wu, etc.
Thank you, Ingrid and Aneta, for such an interesting podcast and post.
Very inspiring advice for young scholars to see things differently and not to be afraid of chasing your area of interest.
I am fascinated by Aneta’s earlier post on how countries were so acceptable and tolerant to multilingualism and I was surprised to see how people managed to communicate within those languages. From my point of view, even though we are living in such a globalized society, I cannot say multilingualism is better than before or past. I have seen or heard that people came from different countries (immigrants) from minority languages backgrounds have been discriminated against when they use their own languages in public or being told to use their language instead which is truly sad that acceptance of multilingualism is becoming narrow these days.
I think language in a hierarchy is strongly tied with the desire to gain individual or national economic and political capital. English has obviously become the dominant international language and it seems its powerful position and influence will persist. I think that the decline of language diversity or multilingualism is attributed to the general perception of hierarchy among languages. Twenty years ago in South Korea, there was hot debate in this regard as to whether to adopt English as an official language. Advocates for adopting English as an official language claimed that it would put South Korea in a more competitive position in a globalizing world since English has linguistic hegemony, holding the top position in the global hierarchy of languages. If South Korea adopted this policy, Korean students would learn every school subject in English. Opponents of the policy asserted that this would result in the devaluing of our heritage language and along with it would be the loss of our culture. Fortunately, English was not adopted as an official language, and so Korea still maintains a strong sense of national identity, preventing the decline of language diversity globally.
Thank you for this intriguing podcast. After listening to this podcast, I am totally convinced with the idea that today’s globe is no more linguistically diverse than it has ever been. Due to globalization, multilingual states have developed in which all languages are permitted to be used in government and everyday life within a legal framework. However, this does not mean that there is full equality of languages. In a multilingual context, while some languages often become dominant in a domain, a significant number of indigenous languages are in risk of extinction, providing an unfavorable environment for multilingualism. This occurs spontaneously as a result of people’s natural tendency to approach language with a more practical and social focus. Thus, when it comes to multilingualism, there is always a power issue.
Hi Ingrid and Aneta,
Thanks for a good listen to the podcast 🙂
We’ve never been more open to learn other languages through globalisation. In certain parts of the world, kids can now learn up to four languages, and we’ve never had so many open resources to learn eg. Youtube videos, video games, Netflix subtitles etc. But are we really getting more multilingual in the world? Listening to this.. I think we are NOT. Languages are dying out eg. Indigenous languages and the way to retain this language is just not happening. It’s sort of form of hegemony, whereby languages like English just seem at the top, and the focus shifts to that, yet the traditional roots of other languages are dying.
Also, there is a hierarchy system whereby speakers of languages like English or German disregard the need to learn other languages that are spoken maybe in 1-2 countries, which doesn’t create this multilingualistic sphere. I’m slowly learning Spanish because it is a vital global language.. but how come I am not studying a language like Hungarian? Lack of job opportunity, lack of resources, not enough speakers? We’ve never been so open to the world to learn languages and to become multilingual, yet we neglect so many languages, their history, their unique grammar structure.
Thanks, Ian! Good point but we shouldn’t beat ourselves up too much, either: most of our forebears probably didn’t even know that there were that many languages in the world …
Thanks Professor Ingrid for sharing this remarkable podcast.
I agreed with Ian, the globalisation has had many effects on language positive and negative. However with the globalisation has allowed languages and cultures to spread more in the last couple years. At the same time it has taken other languages and cultures to the extinction. In other words, no everything has been black or white. Thus, the opportunity to be multilingual, learn more than two languages is not just a myth.
I reckon that language connects closely to the political and economic power of a country, so having language in a hierarchy is a natural thing. This also explains why people would rather learn the top hierarchal language: to climb the ladder, that is the nature of humans. Hence, let’s say in the context of the English language, I think it is too much to say “ immigrant languages are devalued.” The first explanation goes to English as the top language in the hierarchy. The second one would be we cannot come to a country and expect them to learn our language. As long as the natives still pay respect to immigrant languages, that is not devalued at all.
Thank you, Tram, for changing perspective! What you say is right in theory but in practice it’s not the devaluation of languages that is harmful but the concomitant devaluation of people. We often find that people who do not speak English (well) are devalued as people (e.g., students, job applicants, patients are judged not on the basis of what they say but on the basis of their English proficiency).
Thanks for sharing this – I think it’s particularly fascinating to consider the nature of multilingualism within an hierarchical language structure. The nature of language use and the value placed upon languages being dependent on their utility and function within a polity are particularly interesting and relevant at this time in Australia especially with reference to languages other than English and the assumptions made about their relative value.
Lydia
I agree with the idea “the world today is not more multilingual than it was every before.” In the previous centuries (before 20 century), multilingual speakers increase may be due to invasion and war. Multilingualism is inevitable, and locals and invaders need to communicate policies. The multilingual mainly serve governments, not individuals. However, multilingualism is increasing in today’s world and is significant due to globalisation. Multilingual primarily aim to conduct international trade, education, or political activities. Multilingualism makes cultural diversity, and I think it has more benefits than monolingual today. A nation should not be conservative and support multilingualism and accept the different cultures.
Thank you Ingrid for sharing Aneta’s podcast!
I agree that there is a correlation between language and nation, but I think there is another manifestation of language nationalism. It absoluteizes national culture and believes that in perceiving the world, understanding the world, and judging as well as establishing the value standard of the entire world. Only the language of one’s own nation can gain true depth and thoroughness, so there is hostility and arrogant superiority towards the languages of other nations. It is precisely in this way that today’s multilingualism may gradually weaken in the future.
I think the idea of nationalism is that people view themselves as unified as a single group. Nationalists see the country as a loser if there are differences. They believe that diversity weakens their country. They use the same language so that they can share the same culture and the same values. From the political perspective, their standpoint may be reasonable. If their country has a large population, diversity might cause conflict. However, from the cultural perspective, monolingual society is bad for cultural development and having differences makes the culture stronger.
Due to technological development and globalization, there is more communication between people from all over the world. Lots of developed countries lure young overseas students to go to universities and become immigrants. A multilingual society is inevitable.
My apologies, I just have to bring up one more thing that I couldn’t stop thinking about after I finished the podcast. Aneta mentions a few time that the linguistic field is too “emotional”, and seems to look negatively on “social justice warriors”, particularly in America. I do find this to be a point of friction, especially since I am American and grew up in this country whose governments often try to gaslight us into believing that our desires for social justice are too “emotional” and therefore inherently unworthy. I would be interested to understand more about what she means when she talks about the need for linguistics to be less emotional. I truly believe that human languages are just an extension of us, and that humans are inherently emotional beings, and that therefore we simply cannot separate emotion from history and language.
Thanks, Brynn! I can’t speak for Aneta but my view is that questions of linguistic justice center around access (everyone should have fair and equitable access to social goods such as education, employment, health, citizenship, etc.). Unfortunately, these complex questions of linguistic justice are often reduced to identity politics (e.g., the use of “politically correct” language) and a certain eagerness to take offence … I’ll pass your question on to Aneta but, in the meantime, you can find a detailed exploration in my book:
Piller, I. (2016). Linguistic diversity and social justice. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. The video version is here:
And the very short blog version is at https://www.languageonthemove.com/language-and-social-justice/
Oh that’s fantastic, thank you so much for passing on more resources. I will absolutely check these out.
Thanks, Brynn, for raising a very pertinent issue! As a scholar who had dedicated her career to the intersections of language, gender and emotions, I am very familiar with these concerns – women too have been historically dismissed for being too ’emotional’. What concerns me is not emotionality per se but (a) emotionality as a tool used to convince the opponent (regardless of the actual argument), (b) emotions that bias research agendas precluding consideration of alternative explanations, and (c) a very real possibility that the way we feel about languages and certain types of language policies can be used by other actors to manipulate us. In my lecture and in the companion paper on Multilingual ghost signs I just posted on Academia, I tried to illustrate this possibility through Ukrainian Lviv, where municipal authorities restore old signs in Yiddish, Polish and German, none of which are spoken in the city, in hopes visitors will see these signs as a symbol of tolerance and ‘celebration of diversity’ and neglect the dark history behind them and the very real ban on the signs in Russian, the language of the city’s largest linguistic minority. In other words, what I question is not emotions per se, but simplistic emotional connections that lull us into thinking of certain linguistic phenomena and policies, e.g., multilingual signs, as inherently ‘good’, rather than, say, oppressive or manipulative.
That makes so much sense. Thank you very much for taking the time to respond, Aneta! I really enjoyed your lecture and podcast.
I really agree with Aneta’s podcast observation that the upper echelon of modern society has no need to be anything other than monolingual (especially if that one language happens to be English). That is why I was really struck by the parts of her lecture that talked about Norman Sicily, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Mongol Empire. All of the rulers of these countries decided to preside over their subjects in the subjects’ own language(s), rather than the language of the conquerers. To me, that is such an important distinction between how conquerers and colonisers of the 18th-21st centuries (think England and the US) have approached the idea of language and how the above mentioned empires decided to rule.
I do not think it is necessarily possible to determine with certainty whether or not the world is more multilingual today than it has been in the past for all of the reasons that Ingrid and Aneta point out in the podcast (the sheer number of humans on the planet now, social aspects of globalisation, migration, etc.), but I do think it is necessary for us to all think about what Aneta calls the “unmixing” of peoples and languages.
Thanks, Brynn! The “unmixing of peoples” is Lord Curzon’s phrase (another colonial project?) with reference to the “population exchanges” taking place after WWI (e.g., Greeks in the former Ottoman Empire forced to move to Greece if they lived in what was to become Turkey; same for Turks who lived in Greece). Many of the minorities who ended up outside “their” national borders (e.g., Germans all over Europe or “Yugoslavs”) became a destabilizing force throughout the 20th century and were a contributing factors to the wars that followed from WWII via the war in Yugoslavia to today’s wars in the Soviet successor states.
These are two very readable resources if you’d like to pursue this further:
Brubaker, R. (1995). Aftermaths of Empire and the unmixing of peoples: Historical and comparative perspectives. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 18(2), 189-218. doi:10.1080/01419870.1995.9993861
Kulczycki, J. J. (2016). Belonging to the Nation: Inclusion and Exclusion in the Polish-German Borderlands, 1939–1951. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Thanks so much for the resources!
Dear Brynn,
Thank you so much for your comments. It is precisely the fact that we don’t talk much about the many kingdoms and empires that ruled in the languages “not their own” that has me concerned – the neglect of history in our field makes our present-day ideologies more ‘normative’ when the reality is more complicated. The same goes for the relationship between the colonizers and the colonized – not all colonizers were eager to impose their languages. If you read Willemyns’ wonderful biography of Dutch you will see both pragmatic and ideological reasons at play against a program of Dutchification. The 19th and 20th century are much more complex as well, as seen in the language policies of the Austro-Hungarian empire and the USSR, commonly dismissed as ‘prisons of peoples’. I sincerely hope that future students will have access to better textbooks that represent the complexity of multilingual kingdoms and empires and the ‘unmixing’ of peoples. Having said this, I probably disagree with Ingrid on minorities being in and of themselves a destabilizing force (Sudetenland, yes, but in many other places, no) but we can always do another podcast:-)
Thanks, Aneta! Yes, to another podcast – maybe a series? 🙂
Certainly didn’t want to posit minorities as destabilizing as a some sort of law of nature. As always, it depends on the context but in the age of linguistic nationalism, minorities with an imagined homeland and located outside the borders of that “homeland” have often been a destablizing factor in the polity in which they find themselves. German minorities between the two world wars are a prime example, of course.
The podcast is really helpful in terms of investigating languages and nations.I agree with the idea that ‘languages became associated with nations’ and language also faces revolution. For some capital cities, the trend of the population of multilingual speakers is increasing, and this is not a surprising phenomenon. As today’s the population is increasing, and the global economic growth boosts global cooperation, the relationships among each country is closer than before, people prefer to gather into metropolis to look for more business opportunities, which naturally brings linguistic diversities. For example, in Sydney, there are many Chinese, Japanese, and Korean speakers who can also speak English or any other languages. Some of them came Australia may only for jobs, and some of them may for study, just like us. Nevertheless, we have different cultural background, and we bring ours language into Australia, probably, for some reasons, we also learn other languages besides English; and gradually, we become multilingual speakers and Australia becomes a linguistic diversity country. Personally speaking, since English becomes lingual franca, almost every student whose background is non-native English speaking country needs to learn English, and for them, whose major is English, besides English, they are encouraged to learn at least a new language (at least, in China, most universities have this requirement), hence, it is very normal that these people can speak 3 languages. However, If English is not an international language, and if there is no international language, I am just wondering, whether there are still multilingual speakers?
Thanks, Yuxuan! People can be multilingual in all kinds of languages, whether English is involved or not …
Thanks, Yuxuan! The reality is that there have always been international languages, be it Aramaic, Greek, Arabic or Latin – Nicholas Ostler wrote several wonderful books about the history of lingua francas.
I am really convinced by the ideas that the world nowadays may not be more multilingual. As mentioned in this talk, it is true that we may only see some big cities in the world contain more people from different linguistic backgrounds, but we really have no idea about how many languages are dying out. Thus, it is hard to conclude that the world is more multilingual. However, because people are able to travel more freely, it may result in the increase number of multilingual People in the world. Also, the increasing number of people who learn English and Chinese show a great power related of the languages.
Thanks, Vatnak! You are right – we are too often comparing apples and pears …
Thanks for an interesting podcast. To reflect on the topic of the ideology of linguistic nationalism, I would like to look at back my country – Vietnam. Due to the aggression and expansion, Vietnam – an invaded country was affected directly by the languages of other countries. However, the Vietnamese language was not easy to be destroyed. It was the result of selective interference enriching the national language. And the exchange of different languages and cultures nowadays is still going on but voluntarily and peacefully. Language in each person’s brain is indeed formed, developed and used in different ways with different purposes. But the ideology of linguistic nationalism is the same in the whole country as language is a general property of the community, the nation. As Rhonda said, some people consider using the national language as a way of expressing their patriotism. It is true in my country. Refer back to the chat, Dr Pavlenko said, people have the choice for their multilingualism possession. In my country, we encourage multilingualism as it has long been credited for privileged linguistic abilities, cognitive competence and personal development in polyglots. However, the question of whether multilingualism brings negative impacts on the ideology of linguistic nationalism is being analysed.
I was quite surprised to see this new perspective of how the world can be seen as becoming less multilingual! I myself, was a person who believed that the world has become a more multilingual place. After listening to the podcast, I realize how my definition of multilingualism had pertained to the languages each individual speak. Obviously, globalization has played a huge role in changing the world and connecting people from different places. Hence, more people can speak more than one language – other than their mother tongue.
However, I now come to realize that if we shift the focus from the people and instead to the language itself, it is a whole different story. It is, in fact, true that there were more languages a long time ago because different tribes and different regions – who all live in a single piece of land – spoke differently. With modernization, many languages have become extinct, and people in the same region started to become more unified in terms of language (of course in order to communicate!). Today, countries have their own official language. Even though there are people who can speak multiple languages, people would expect to speak English if in England and French if in France. So, it is true, people have become more multilingual while the world has become less multilingual.
Borrowing Professor Pavlenko’s words, it depends on how you define linguistic diversity and multilingualism.
It was a fun twist of thinking! 🙂
Thanks, Kim. Declining linguistic diversity is one factor, another is language standardization. In the premodern times, the limited number of standardized languages of prestige ensured that educated people were multilingual by default. This is not the case today for English or Russian speakers who, once upon a time, needed to know French and Latin (in England) or German and French (in imperial Russia).
Thank you for this interesting podcast!
I was quite astonished when Aneta explained how today’s interpretation of multilingualism is rather simplistic and positive, ignoring that the main motivation behind the incorporation of multicultural practices by governments and institutions is related to practical purposes rather than holding multilingualism in high esteem.
After listening to the podcast, I have come to reflect upon how nowadays it is easy to make generalisations in terms of modern views on equality which can also be projected on how multilingualism is seen – or on how we wish it was actually seen-. The speech of the 21 century comes with an idealistic concept of what society should be like, and that is why any action that attempts to include difference (signage in different languages, for example) is quickly classified as inclusive and adopted as part of the proof of the more equalitarian mentality attributed to current times.
Nevertheless, as Aneta mentioned, it is evident that the languages of immigrants are often devalued and that the reality of language learning and language preservation is that more effort goes towards learning languages at a high hierarchy, whereas speakers of such languages do not consider learning languages which are positioned at lower levels to be necessary at all. This shows that we are actually not as close to that concept of equality and the value of differences as we may think.
I think the ideas shared on this subject in the podcast are a wonderful example of how these types of generalisations lead us to misinterpret reality by focusing on what is seen on the surface and, perhaps, on our own idealisations that miss the whole picture.
Thanks, Ness! Just as an aside, multilingual prohibitions perfectly exemplify your point about how celebrating surface multilingualism, even if it actually serves to malign and stereotype speakers of particular languages: https://www.languageonthemove.com/toiletology/ and https://www.languageonthemove.com/multilingual-prohibitions/
Thanks, Ness, for putting it so eloquently and perceptively. As an abstract idea, ‘multilingualism’ is no less manipulative than ‘linguistic nationalism’ and is frequently used to lull us into a sense of faux inclusion.
Thanks for sharing the podcast and this post! They are both a pleasure to listen to and read!
I feel like multilingualism intertwines so close with national power today than in the past. Languages are becoming more of political importance instead of a tool for communication. I can remind of an interesting but true example of the impact of linguistic nationalism on multilingualism, which was the Oscar Award was normally given to the movies of English-speaking countries. It is so rare to see that any Asia countries or countries that speak a minor language win this award because major English-speaking countries such as the US or Britain are major powers in the world, and their language is the dominant one (South Korea won the Oscar in 2019, but it was not always the case). I think the ideological and political factor is really important in linguistic nationalism that they even reinforce multilingualism hierarchy. But for me, I am trying to learn Korean and Japanese in my spare time, I think language gives people a chance to know about other cultures. They should be used by people to bridge cultures and overcome misunderstandings instead.
Thanks, Xiaowen, for saying this so beautifully! Couldn’t agree more and good luck studying Korean and Japanese!
Hobsbawm (1996) argued that national languages are constructed by human beings. Human beings play an important roles especially when it comes to turning it into print. On the other hand, people use language as a marker of ethnicity, which is primarily politically motivated; “political ideology plays a pivotal role in the construction of national languages”. Due to the patriotism, people believe that their roots are the country where they speak the language. In my opinion, even if English has more power than any other language now, I’d happy to learn English because that is a medium for people to communicate around the world.
reference:
Hobsbawn, E. (1996). Language, culture, and national identity. Social research, 1065-1080.
In regards to multilingualism, we often hear about multilingualism and the advantages that speakers of multiple languages have in all fields of life. From my opinion, the truth is, it doesnt matter how many languages you speak and how fluent in any of them you are,if you dont speak English all your spoken languages are nothing.
Thanks, WAA! That’s a rather gloomy perspective to take … Reminds me of a language ideological example I use in my book Intercultural Communication, which I’ll simply copy here:
“Linguistic choices are embedded within language ideologies which valorise some languages over others and some speakers over others. For instance, a few years ago I had a conversation with a young Iranian woman who had grown up bilingually in Persian and Azeri. Azeri is closely related to Turkish and she had taught herself how to read Turkish. Additionally, she had studied Arabic as a foreign language. I was very impressed and, with the expansive map of the areas where these languages are spoken, basically all of the Middle East and Central Asia, before my mental eye, I said: ‘Wow, so many languages. You can communicate wherever you go from the Bosporus to Xinjiang.’ However, my enthusiastic admiration was cut short when she responded, ‘Who cares, if you don’t speak English?’ The example explains the process of language ideologies and the ways in which they valorise different languages differently quite clearly: proficiency in three widely spoken languages is discounted and considered less valuable than proficiency in the global language English. The example also shows that language ideologies make us overlook the obvious such as the fact that in her part of the world – we had that conversation in Tehran – you cannot get by on a daily basis without Persian but you certainly can without English. Indeed, the continued spread of English is partly based on the way in which ever more people come to believe that they ‘need’ English” (Piller, 2017, p. 87)
Thanks, WAA, gloomy but realistic! The purpose of this talk was indeed to draw attention to the hierarchical, context-embedded and value-laden nature of multilingualism, where the nature of linguistic repertoires matters more than the number of ‘languages’.
Thank you for sharing this inspirational podcast. I reflected on Dr. Aneta’s comment regarding multilingualism hierarchy in terms of power, dominance, and strength rather than your language and my language. We often feel a sense of possession with our languages because of the ideology of linguistic nationalism. Some people view using their national language as a means of showing patriotism. Alternatively, some people view languages equally as a tool of communication and a methodology of learning about other cultures. The idea of lingual franca thus becoming individualised depends on one’s need and purpose. I have seen some short videos about an American man who speaks fluent Chines; he always shares his opinion on learning Mandarin. He lives in Beijing as he uses Chinese to interact with people regardless of his nationality. I always believe multilingualism should be a gift for our civilization and enhance the shared super-diversity of our cultures to a global level.
Thanks, Rhonda! You are right – ultimately, what matters most is what we choose to do with language!
Thanks for the inspiring chats!
History and multilingualism interest me a lot and enjoyed listening to Prof. Pavlenko’s Einar Haugen lecture too.
About emotion, I find it is hard to balance it with research products be it spoken ones or written ones. it is not because I wanted or not wanted to infuse my words with emotion, rather it is colleagues or audience sometimes for instance during interviews expect you to show personal feelings perhaps by sharing some personal experiences, which of course impacts how they evaluate my work and me but which does not suit how certain peoples share their emotion or do their research. For junior scholars this is a challenge especially.
About linguistic nationalism and emotion actually the discourse “we have become more emotional about languages” may undermine marginalized peoples’ language movements because nation states which are similarly emotional often take on “rational” facade. Also in some historical contexts language, emotion and national identity are also probably tightly linked prior to the birth of linguistic nationalism, for instance in 18th century Qing empire, QianLong emperor started quite anxiously Manchu language revival.
Thanks, Gegentuul, for these important points! Agree that at the “appropriate” display of emotions in academic contexts is actually heavily regulated and that “emotion work” (in the form of the sharing of personal experiences) can be imposed on minority people and women in a way that is not only onerous and annoying but can also easily be turned against them, if contexts change …
Thanks also for you point about the Qianlong emperor! Our conversation was Eurocentric, that’s for sure …
Dear Gegentuul,
Thank you so much for your comments and for drawing attention to the Qing dynasty. Qing multilingualism is a fascinating phenomenon which so far it has been extensively discussed by historians but has gotten little attention from sociolinguists.
As to emotions, we infuse our words with emotions whether we want to or not. My concern is with how scholars articulate their research agendas and the possibility that strong emotions lead people to ‘prove’ their point rather than take all possibilities and alternatives into account. To give you a concrete example, why is it that we are comfortable accusing national elites/nation-states of linguistic nationalism but never consider the possibility that the language movements by people we see as marginalized may be an instantiation of the same linguistic nationalism? The reason I discussed transformations of Bratislava in my talk (and in my own upcoming book) was precisely to demonstrate that every time the power relations changed in the city, the formerly oppressed people (in the 19th century Magyars, in the 20th century Slovaks) became the new oppressors imposing their language on the rest.
Thanks for the inspiring conversation!
As ‘You are what you speak’ and ‘language is a proxy of power’, in my opinion, these points help explain why multilingualism is gradually declining, since people are naturally prone to approach the languages with power at the expense of other languages, say, heritage languages. I wonder if we look at the other side, from an individual perception, could individuals in this modern society be more multilingual than others living long before? If it is so, another conjecture, is this going to be the culmination of individual multilingualism before the world linguistic pattern settles down? Or, is there a possibility that multilingualism may maintain, at least maintain the current status, as the power of nations keeps shifting and new dominant languages spring up (in consideration of the current situation caused by Covid-19)? And, the last question, is there a way to retain heritage languages to keep the macro multilingualism when people are on the way to individual multilingualism?
Thanks, Anka, for your interesting questions! Maybe it all depends on the context; going back to last week’s lecture about English in China and how the spread of English is today driven by Chinese language policies to a large extent, maybe the embrace of multilingual language policies (be it Chinese+English, or Chinese+English+other languages) is a quantitatively and qualitatively different phenomenon from anything we’ve seen in the past?
Dear Anka,
Thank you for your comments. Since multilingualism is always hierarchical, some individuals and societies will always be multilingual, even if we can’t easily count – or even define – languages. What I find interesting are the many meanings vested in multilingualism – is it always the direct opposite or the counterbalance to linguistic nationalism? Or is Susan Gal right, and we can also talk about polyglot nationalism, in which case multilingualism is not the panacea we’ve come to believe it to be? The same involves heritage languages – are language revitalization and heritage movement entirely divorced from the idea that some languages are more “ours” than others?
Optimism and pessimism strike me as ephemeral emotions or attitudes whereas William James’ meliorism, together with Dale Carnegie’s ‘day-tight compartments’, constitute the Yankee-know-how that saved Australia at Guadal Canal and routed the IJN at Midway and ended Rommel’s career in Normandy. With apologies to the Bard: Neither an optimist nor a pessimist be, for both doth dull the edge of husbandry. ATTITUDE is not quite everything! I’d bet London to a brick, were Baha’is allowed to wager, that few readers here realize that the First Marine Division’s home in WW2 was the MCG and that to this day their insignia is the Southern Cross and their battle hymn is Waltzing Matilda.
Sure we can, Ingrid jaan.
Patriotism can entirely replace nationalism just as all evilly negative isms are being wound back today by young people who work for an ever advancing civilization. (BTW, have you ever heard the not so easy to find ‘ISMS Song’ by Queenslanders, George Karko and his much more famous wife Louetta Farrar?; not the DOG EAT DOG’s ISMS occupying Google’s no. 1 slot) Actually, a world without nationalism is not only possible, it’s inevitable, by building on the biological oneness of the human world; all the sciences, unlike back in the day, currently acknowledge said oneness now that crack pot phrenologists, venal eugenicists and slippery snake oil salesmen are easily exposed online.
I’m not too good with Arabic, Greek and Latin but I am cool with the advantage that English gives my teenage kids, or any other language that their kids might choose as an international auxlang, which by its mere widespread existence terminates nationalism & racism forever coz, don’t you agree that the greatest means of progress towards the union of East and West will be a common language? It will make the whole world one home & become the strongest impulse for human advancement. It will upraise the standard of the oneness of humanity!
Chapeau to your optimism!