The ecology of language

Abstract

Most language descriptions are prefaced by a brief and perfunctory statement concerning the number and location of its speakers and something of their history. Rarely does such a description really tell the reader what he ought to know about the social status and function of the language in question. Linguists have generally been too eager to get on with the phonology, grammar, and lexicon to pay more than superficial attention to what I would like to call the 'ecology of language.' I believe we could profit from paying special attention to this aspect, which has been explored in some depth in recent years by linguists working in cooperation with anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, and psychologists. Most linguists have been willing to leave the field to the non-linguistic social scientists, but I believe that there is a strong linguistic component in language ecology. Language ecology may be defined as the study of interactions between any given language and its environment. The definition of environment might lead one's thoughts first of all to the referential world to which language provides an index. However, this is the environment not of the language but of its lexicon and grammar. The true environment of a language is the society that uses it as one of its codes. Language exists only in the minds of its users, and it only functions in relating these users to one another and to nature, i.e. their social and natural environment. Part of its ecology is therefore psychological: its interaction with other languages in the minds of bi- and multilingual speakers. Another part of its ecology is sociological: its interaction with the society in which it functions as a medium of communication . The ecology of a language is determined primarily by the people who learn it, use it, and transmit it to others. In writings of the nineteenth century it was common to speak of the 'life of languages,' because the biological model came easily to a generation that had newly discovered evolution. Languages were born and died, like living organisms. They had their life spans, they grew and changed like men and animals, they had their little

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