Babel and the market: Geostrategies for minority languages

Abstract

Assuming that a language has some control over its destinies will help us outline the appropriate actions to be taken by a political decision maker who, typically, makes the same assumption of governability when he or she wishes to guide a minority language towards security and prosperity. Of course, most languages are far from having the control of the functions of goal setting, integration, adaptation and socialisation required by Parsonian theory to distinguish a system from a set. Most languages lack pilots; most of them are like leaves in the wind. But major standardised languages have at least some control over their own evolution, and those that are supported by a government have ways of steering their relations among the other languages with which they are linked by communication, competition, cooperation and conflict. What should the geopolitical survival strategy of such a language be when it is confronted with a more powerful competitor? From Babel to Adam Smith The social sciences are often said to abound in theories but to be short of laws. That this be so makes it all the more important that we give due attention to one of these laws, a law that governs language contact: the ancient law of Babel (Laponce 1984; 1992; 2001). Yahweh, having finally noted what the sons of men were doing, said: ‘Behold, they are one people, they have only one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do: and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible to them. Come, let us go down, and then confuse their languages, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth …’

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