University of Arizona, Tucson 12/06/2013
Ecology of Language: A
South-East European
Point of View
Angel G. Angelov
St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia
University of Washington, Seattle
Truly, how could I tell you everything that characterizes the life
of birds! How cranes stand night watch, taking turns by
relieving each other. Some of them sleep, others go around in
a circle and keep watch over them. And when the allotted time
for the watch is over, the crane, who has finished his service,
cries out and goes to sleep. The one who replaces him now
watches the rest, as he was guarded before. The same order
can be seen when flying. First one leads, than another. Once
he has led the flock for some time, he passes the leadership of
the flock to another.
• “Shestodnev” by St. Joan Exarch
a medieval Bulgarian scholar, writer and translator, one of the most
important men of letters working at the Preslav Literary School at the end
of the 9th and the beginning of the 10th century
questions:
• Could public and international institutions to manage
linguistic processes?
• What is the essence of the term biocultural niches and
can we (linguists) talk about cultural niches as
ecologists talk about biological niches?
• What is the prognosis for regional dialects? Is there a
way to save them as a means of communication even
in rural communities?
• Dialect leveling and urbanization - what do "green
ideas" have to offer to explain these processes?
• Why linguistic rights, not language rights?
Basic issues in this presentation:
• The essence of an ecolinguistic approach
• The terms "linguistic human rights," "social
responsibility" and "glocalization“
• Language planning in the era of globalization
Tabl. 1. A comparison between linguistic subfields
Dialectology
Sociolinguistics
• Dialects – full description
• Standard language
• Language territory
• Speech societies
• sociolects
• mezolects
• professiolects
• Language in its social
contexts
• Historical development
of the language
• Territorial distribution
of the dialects
• Language contacts
• Language change
• Contrastive
observations on
phonology, grammar,
lexicon
• Descriptive
• Language mapping
• Historical phonological
laws
• Modeling grammatical
rules
• Vocabularies‘
collections
• Macro- and microsociolinguistics
• linguistic variability
• Linguistic markers and
variables
• language Planning
• language Policy
• Language and media
• Language of the city
• Discovering diagnostic
features
• Quantitative
(sociometric) studies
• Statistic approaches
and ANOVA
• Contrastive
sociolinguistic studies
Ecolinguistics
• logosphere
• Language in our human
environment (Umvelt)
• The bio-, socio-,
thechnosystems
interactions
• Language in its global (and
universal) context
• Communication in the complex
ecosystems (various networks of river
streams, canals and infrastructure; a
complex ecological terrain that
includes the hydrologic, geologic,
transportation, utility)
• Relationships between global and loca
in language use (international
contracts)
• Language diversity
• Endangered languages
• Informational pollution
• Virtual communication
• Zoomorphic metaphors
• Modeling communication
behavior in ecosystems
• From language
Feedback Model in early biocybernetics –
Theoretische Biologie, 1920.
Jakob Johann von Uexküll (1864-1944) –
Якоб Йохан фон Юкскюл (рус. Икскюль).
The grammar of experience: the cover of An Introduction to Functional
Grammar, 2nd ed. (1994), by M.A.K. Halliday, showing the types of
process as they have evolved in English grammar
Fig. 2. Functions of Language
According to Jacobson (1960) - There are six
factors of an effective verbal communication.
To each one corresponds a communication
function (Referential, Expressive, Conative,
Poetic Phatic, Metalingual)
The formalist principle: The function of natural language.
Analogy between the concepts of "context" and "umvelt" (living environment, ambient)
Bachman and
Palmer's model
(1996) of Language
Knowledge
Hoffmeyer J. (1996). Signs of Meaning in the Universe.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Hockett's design features and their implications for human language
(16 features)
The Design Features of Language was a phrase coined in the 1960s by the
American linguist Charles Hockett.
instincts vs. rituals and transmitted knowledge
Types of areas around our planet: lithosphere,
atmosphere, hydrosphere, magnetosphere, biosphere,
and noosphere, logosphere
Владимир Вернадски
(1863-1945)
Zoomorphic and geomorphic
metaphors
• Tree of biological evolution (Darwin) - Tree of language
evolution (Schleicher)
• Ecosystems and populations in crises - demographic
issues, migration and cultural systems in crisis
• Food chains - language contacts
• Endangered species - endangered languages (IUCN Red
List )
• Pollution of the Planet – information pollution
• Climate change (global warming) – language
globalization
Analogies between biology and
electrical engineering
Digital (memory) cell - biological cell
Web - Internet
Organism - machine, apparatus
Ecosystem – context of communication
Food chain - peaceful coexistence
Biodiversity - linguistic and cultural diversity
Ecolinguistics’ task: helping to resolve the
conflict between the bio- and techno-systems
Definitions with a view of the main
terms
• Linguistic human rights - this is a legal term. The term
linguistic rights has a narrow meaning, in linguistic terms.
In English the distinction exists - Linguistic Human Rights
vs. Language Rights, for example: Universal declaration
of Linguistic Rights.
• In French, it is only one term: Déclaration Universelle des
Droits Linguistiques.
• In German it is the other term: SPRACHRECHTE Auf
Veranlassung des IDV (Internationaler
Deutschlehrerverband) übersetzt von Torvald Perman
Attempt to define:
• language is a core value of the individual and of speech groups. A separate
language has symbolic capital and it is convenient for those who share it,
but overall, supranational language has other advantages:
•
•
– it removes barriers to communication and knowledge. Humans have an ability
to learn (and teach) different languages, which is a prerequisite for solving the
problem. Language loss has a catastrophic impact, i.e. it is a significant loss of
diversity.
Today we talk about the right of individual language as a fundamental human
right. “Human rights” are an ontological problem "(Brandt 1995). There is a conflict
between individual and collective identity and the different perspectives between
the principles of identifying: self-determination is not synonymous with
identification.
Often the question of freedom of speech vs. language rights are confused. The
rights of an individual language is related to the determination of its status, i.e. ad
hoc addresses the question of the functions of language (formal or colloquial). In a
number of international documentations the terminology of the issues of language
rights and linguistic genocide is still unsatisfactory.
European Charter for Regional or
Minority Languages
Opening for signature
Place: Strasbourg
Date : 5/11/1992
Entry into force
1/3/1998
Status as of: 4/12/2013
Signed by 33 countries;
Total number of
ratifications/accessions:
The term "social responsibility"
• In my view we need a theory of social responsibility with regard to issues of
culture and language. Such a theory exists regarding some collective
responsibilities with respect to legal entities. This theory is developed
especially in view of the damage to the environment done by different
companies working mainly in the field of energy, and the use of land
resources and fishing.
• The issue of social responsibility today is increasingly linked with the socalled bioethics posed in the 70’s in the U.S. (in conjunction with organ
transplantation). Today, bioethics is on the rise especially in the field of
medicine and legal cases like organ transplantation, blood transfusion,
euthanasia, genetic engineering, life extension, contraception, abortion,
cloning , etc).
• This term is new and should be related to issues of language. Contemporary
life needs more effective language planning, which now has a supranational
dimension. Language planning is a topic familiar from many works in the
field of macrosociolinguistics, but now it needs significant additions from
ecolinguistics.
Language Planning (traditional view)
• Corpus Planning - consistently builds vocabulary richness (purism),
creating regulatory grammar, developing specialized languages, registers
and literary genres. It is natural processing, but supported by the
collective care and will of the educated classes, i.e. graphization,
standardization, modernization, establishment of a written tradition.
• Status Planning - self-identification and identification, collective decisions
and convening of congresses. Ethnic convergence, divergence, denial of
autonomy or desire for autonomy.
• Acquisition Planning - particularly relevant to developing and former
colonial countries. Presence of diglossia and bilingualism. Associated with
the planning of prestige. Extremely important is the role of the University,
which complete the generational circle of education and provides
linguistic reproduction.
Тable . 2. Language Planning in the Era of Global Changes
Functions Planning
Lingua Franca or Local
Language – a difficult
choice according to the
status, prestige,
competence and
intelligibility
New and Old Spheres of
Use:
• Media
• Every day communication
• Official performances
• Literature
• Science
• Mobile communication
and Internet
Macro- and micro-languages
Care for the language users
with disabilities (Sensory
disability, Intellectual
disability)
Leveling Planning
• Global discourse and
global culture
• Intra-language leveling
and on a conceptual level
• Intercultural
comprehension
• Transfer of concepts
• Loss of concepts
• Lexical leveling – transfer
of morphemes and other
elements
• Transfer of syntax and
phrases
• Transfer of word
formation
• Simplification of the
grammar
Vitality Planning
•
Developing specialized
registers for the needs of
science and education
•
Translation or language
training in foreign
languages
•
Maintenance of dialects
and regional and
minority languages
•
Appropriate linguistic
autonomy
•
Care language media of
disadvantaged groups
•
Planning migration and
demographic shifts
Some facts:
• According to a report by UNESCO since 2010 the biggest
languages today are - Mandarin 14.1% , Spanish 5.85% ,
English 5.52% , Hindi 4.46% , Arabic 4.23% , Portuguese 3.08
% , Bengali 3.05% , Russian 2.42% , Japanese 1.92% , 1.44%
Punjabi (percentages indicate the proportion of the language
users).
• 90% from 7000 languages will disappear in the next 100 years;
• 19 languages in South America today have only one carrier , in
Australia there are 250 endangered languages, including in the
next 10 years will only survived 15 ( Zuckerman 2013 ) .
The consciousness of the storks approaches almost that of the
understanding of verbal creatures. They all arrive at one of
these places where they live, and again at a certain time -- as
they had previously agreed – then all fly away. The care and
protection of old storks by younger would be enough of a
lesson for our children, if only they would see how much
more they loved heir father and mother. Storks stand in a
circle around the father when he loses his feathers, they
cover him with their wings to keep him warm. They offer him
food and help him as best they can by lifting him from both
sides with their wings and carrying him. Hence the famous
saying, in which all good deeds are called “stork gratitude”.
St. John Exarch
Ecolinguistics is an old and new science - it contains
old wisdom and morals gleaned from our ancestors
and what is new comes from changes in our daily
lives. Unfortunately, the trends are alarming, but the
methods of ecolinguistics can be considered to be
reliable.
Thank you for the attention.