The Low Countries. Jaargang 10

Language

Languages in Competition

With his new book Words of the World the Amsterdam sociologist Abram de Swaan makes an important contribution to the political economics of language rivalry in the global language system.

All over the world we see the rise of English, in many different domains (politics, trade, the law, science, the internet, sports, infotainment and the media) and in many different countries, including the Netherlands and Belgium, where - as Tom McArthur observed in The English Languages (1998) - English is now no longer a foreign language. The other side of this coin is the threat of language death. According to Nettle and Romaine's book Vanishing Voices (2000), ninety percent of the world's 6,000 languages will die out in the present century. For this reason, over the past ten years many linguists have joined the call for action to preserve linguistic diversity (see Uhlenbeck in The Low Countries 1993-94: 25-32), and in 2000 Tove Skutnabb-Kangas called for an international campaign for linguistic human rights in her book Linguistic Genocide in Education - or Worldwide Diversity and Human Rights?

Here De Swaan takes a different position. For him the key issue is that of language and power. In a global context language groups are in unequal competition, and their exchanges proceed on very unequal terms. In the first part of his book De Swaan presents a theoretical framework for the analysis of competition between languages. Using mathematical models from game theory and economic decision-making he constructs a formula for calculating the so-called Q-value of a language, which reflects its economic and cultural weight and its consequent social desirability. The many advantages of English, for example, greatly enhance its Q-value, and as a result we see a stampede into English by millions of people all over the world. The theory of Q-values is certainly the most original and important part of De Swaan's book. It would be very interesting to link it to Peter Nelde's work in conflict linguistics. De Swaan's theory also has important implications for a language such as Dutch - which he labels ‘Netherlandish’, perhaps because he does not discuss the case of Dutch and Dutch language policy in Belgium and Flanders - and poses a clear challenge to the Dutch language authorities in the Low Countries: is it possible to raise the Q-value of Dutch by developing / implementing an effective and attractive language policy and by investing in the future, in teaching Dutch as a second language, and in Dutch speech and language technology?

De Swaan then goes on to present five highly informative case studies of language competition in multilingual societies - in India, Indonesia, Central and South Africa, and in the European Union (eu). While these chapters provide a solid empirical basis, the analysis will need to be extended to, among other things, competition between English and Spanish or Arabic; to cases of urban multilingualism caused by globalisation in e.g. London and Amsterdam; and to the web, where, according to David Crystal in his latest book, Language and the Internet (2001), linguistic diversity is alive and well and about a quarter of the world's languages have some form of presence today.

A very interesting case in De Swaan's book is that of Indonesia, which unlike India has not retained the language of its former coloniser. To explain why, De Swaan analyses both the demise of Dutch and the surrender of Javanese in competition with Malay. Under De Swaan's Q-formula, the choice of Malay was both realistic and rational, for, as demonstrated in Groeneboer's Gateway to the West (1998; see The Low Countries 1999-2000: 277-278), Malay was used as lingua franca throughout the archipelago, by the colonial administration and the army in their contacts with the native population, in schools and hospitals, in markets, plantations and factories, in the press, in politics and literature.

Similarly, many Dutch people today would consider it just as rational and realistic to adopt English as the single official language of the European Union. The eu today has twelve official languages, two of which - English and French - are used as working languages. In addition, the European Charter of Fundamental Rights of December 2000 has for the first time defined the basic language rights of European citizens. But what will happen when the eu expands still further? The key thesis De Swaan presents in chapter 8, on the basis of extensive statistics, is that the more languages are officially recognised, the more this will work to the advantage of English. Indeed, given that today ninety percent of all European schoolchildren are learning English, we may already have passed the point of no return. It would be simplistic, however, to assume that knowing English is sufficient by itself, as if other lan-

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guages now no longer matter. Indeed, an important feature of De Swaan's book is its consistent focus on the position of bilinguals as intermediaries whose linguistic skills provide the necessary interconnections in the global language system. The eu would therefore do well to consider the economic potential of its multilingual service sector, and to expand and improve the programmes for foreign language learning and translation in all its member states.

A more socio-cultural reason for such a European investment in learning each others' languages has to do with the European Year of Languages (2001), which has considerably raised awareness of the continent's linguistic diversity. Thus, in her recent travel book Mother Tongues (2001) Helena Drysdale recounts her visits to the linguistic minorities in Europe, noting that quite a few are seriously at risk of dying out in the near future. De Swaan, however, has little to say about these languages and refers only in passing to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages of 1998. He also says little about the situation of immigrant languages, which are the subject of Extra & Gorter's stimulating volume on The Other Languages of Europe (2000).

De Swaan's well-documented book makes very clear what is at stake in matters of language choice. His discussion, however, is predominantly framed in terms of free choice versus protectionism, and this does not seem entirely adequate, since many other factors - such as cultural values, social traditions, political ideologies and personal attachments - appear to play a role as well. In any case, if, as De Swaan claims, language constellations are indeed first and foremost a matter of power relations, then we have to ask how, in a democratic Europe, the ongoing competition between languages can be regulated and managed fairly.

The French novelist Amin Maalouf has made an important suggestion here. In his prize-winning essay On Identity (2000) he proposes a three-pronged language strategy for Europe: first, ‘to preserve the language of one's own identity, and never let it be so neglected that those who speak it have to turn elsewhere for access to what is offered them by the civilization of today’; second, ‘to make the teaching of English as a third language a matter of course everywhere, and without repining, but explaining to the younger generation that while it is necessary it is not sufficient’; and third, ‘to encourage linguistic diversity so that there are many people in every country familiar not only with Spanish, French, Portuguese, German but also with Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and a hundred other languages that are more rarely studied.’

reinier salverda

Abram de Swaan, Words of the World. The Global Language System. Cambridge: Polity Press / Blackwell, 2001; 253 pp. isbn 0-7456-2748-x.