Colonisation, Globalisation, and the Future of Languages in the Twenty-first Century

The typical academic discourse on language endangerment has presented languages as anthropomorphic organisms with lives independent of their speakers and capable of negotiating on their own the terms of their coexistence. Not surprisingly it has become commonplace to read about killer languages in the same vein as language wars, language murders and linguicides. I argue below that languages are parasitic species whose vitality depends on the communicative behaviours of their speakers, who in turn respond adaptively to changes in their socio-economic ecologies. Language shift, attrition, endangerment and death are all consequences of these adaptations. We must develop a better understanding of the ways in which one ecology differs from another and how these dissimilarities can account for variation in the vitality of individual languages. Globalisation is discussed as part of the relevant language ecology. I submit that only local globalisation has endangered or driven * This article has largely developed from my contribution to a debate with Professor Claude Hagège, under the title Quel avenir pour les langues?, at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris on 19 September 2001 (part of the series Entretiens sur le XXI siècle). The original French title was Colonisation, mondialisation, globalisation et l’avenir des langues au XXI siècle, from which mondialisation has now been omitted, for reasons that soon become obvious in the text. The essay has also benefited from lectures I gave on 7 November and 3 December 2001 at, respectively, the National University of Singapore and Hong Kong University entitled “Colonization, globalization, and language endangerment”. I am equally indebted to Michel DeGraff, Claude Hagège, Alison Irvine, Paul Newman and my anonymous referees for comments on earlier drafts of this publication. 2 most languages to extinction.