Declining linguistic diversity and the flawed attempts to protect it
Reversing Babel is a doctoral research project (Economic and Social Research Council award no. PTA-030-2005-00968), carried out by Dave Sayers in the Department of Sociology at the University of Essex, UK, under the joint supervision of Yasemin Soysal (Sociology) and David Britain
(Linguistics).
Download the full thesis (PDF, 16MB, requires Adobe Reader):
Abstract:
This is
an investigation about linguistic diversity, examining its decline in
different societal conditions over the last century, and interrogating
claims in language policy and planning to be ‘protecting
linguistic diversity’, using the UK as its main example.
Chapter 1 comprises a review of variationist sociolinguistics, showing
how it has never fully defined linguistic diversity. Adjustments are
suggested, and a working definition of linguistic diversity offered.
Chapter 2 presents data from two major nationwide dialect surveys, in
1889 and 1962, showing how local dialects were weakening in this
period. The main focus is declining diversity, but information is
presented about possible conditioning factors, primarily increases in
literacy.
In the absence of such nationwide reports after 1962, Chapter 3
collates individual dialect studies from two regions of England, the
northeast and southeast, describing dialect convergence across these
large geographical areas. These changes are contrasted to those
reported in Chapter 2. Again the main theme is declining diversity, but
information is reviewed to help explain these contrasts, primarily
increases in geographical mobility in the latter half of the 20th
century, concentrated around these regions.
Chapter 4 examines dialect weakening that some researchers have
attributed, at least in part, to the media. This also represents a
change in societal conditions undergirding declining diversity. Some
theoretical work is done to distinguish such changes from those
observed in Chapter 3.
Chapter 5 reviews the rhetoric of minority language policy and
planning, and its frequent and explicit claims to be ‘protecting
linguistic diversity’. The insights developed in Chapters 1-4 are
applied to two modern UK language revivals, Cornish and Welsh, to see
how diversity overall is faring here.
The conclusion sums up the gaps in our thinking about linguistic
diversity, and clarifies the limitations of planned interventions upon
language.
...email the author...