Understanding Communication in a Globalised World
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UCOMSession2A2019.pdf
Global patterns in language use
Understanding language and communication in global contexts
Objectives: to introduce you to…
1. What is communication and is it different from language? 2. World languages and language families 3. ‘Big’ and ‘small’ languages 4. Language contact, loss and death 5. Variation within languages: accent, dialect, register
What is language and is it different from communication? Are these examples of language? communication? neither? both?
qA dog scratches on the door to the garden and barks and whines qA 3-month-old baby cries qA 3-year-old child says “I won’t eat tomatoes because I hate them!” qThe CEO of a company gets up and walks around his desk to greet a new young
employee with a handshake.
Some defining features of human language 1. Language is culturally transmitted Language is passed on from one generation to the next by a process of cultural transmission
A baby born to Mandarin speakers in China is adopted at birth by English- speakers who live in the UK. What language will be the child’s mother tongue (first language)?
2. Language is organised at different levels simultaneously • Sounds • Words • Sentences (grammar) • Discourse
Every time we speak, listen, read or write our brains are simultaneously processing all four levels Other forms of communication have nothing like this complexity.
Humans do not only communicate through language
Whenever humans interact, we interpret a large number of signals as ‘communicating something’ • Body language • Facial expression • Eye contact • Physical space • Tone of voice, loudness, pitch • Silence • Dress, appearance ….
Language vs Communication
Communication includes language AND all the non- verbal signals we send and receive
Language is only one aspect of communication but it is the most sophisticated means for expressing our selves & our ideas.
Language is unique to humans.
Languages of the world
• How many different languages are there in the world? • There are + 6,500 – 7,000
distinct languages in the world (Why aren’t we more sure??)
Language families • Languages are grouped into
families of related varieties
• A language family is a group of related languages that developed from a common historic ancestor
Language families of the world: distribution
Largest language families
6 major language families account together for 2/3 of all languages and 5/6 of the world’s population
1. Indo-European 2. Afro-Asiatic 3. Niger-Congo 4. Sino-Tibetan 5. Austronesian 6. Trans-New Guinea
Indo-European language family
spoken across Europe, southwest and south Asia
Afro-Asiatic language family
spoken in Middle East and North Africa
Niger-Congo Language family
spoken in West, East, Southern Africa
Sino-Tibetan language family
spoken in China, Taiwan, Singapore, Tibet, Myanmar, Nepal
Austronesian language family
spoken in Malaysia, Philippines, Java, Borneo, Vietnam, Cambodia
Trans-New Guinea language family
spoken in New Guinea and surrounds
(simplified) example of a family tree Indo-European language family
Germanic Romance Slavic Celtic Indo-Iranian
English, German … French, Spanish Slovak Irish Hindi, Punjabi, Guajarati
Portuguese … Czech … Welsh … Urdu, Bengali…
Common historic ancestors Romance languages were once dialects of a single language, Latin Hindi, Bengali, Urdu developed from Sanskrit All share a common distant ancestor: Proto-Indo-European
Big and small languages
Some languages have very few speakers others have very large numbers of speakers
Can you guess the top 10 of ‘big languages’?
Languages with at least 50 million first-language speakers
Primary country Total countries 1. Chinese China 37 2. Spanish Spain 31 3. English UK 106 4. Arabic Saudi Arabia 57 5. Hindi India 5 6. Bengali Bangladesh 4 7. Portuguese Portugal 13 8. Russian Russian Federation 19 9. Japanese Japan 2 10. Lahnda Pakistan 6 source:
https://www.ethnologue.com/
And in the top 20 …
more languages of India (e.g. Tamil, Telegu), more European languages (German, French, Italian), another language of Pakistan (Urdu), also Korean, Javanese (spoken in Indonesia), Turkish and Vietnamese.
But …
• Are we counting native speakers only? Or do we include 2nd language speakers?
• BIG languages = numbers of speakers? or power (political/economic/military/social)?
The most spoken languages worldwide (native speakers and second-language speakers) in millions
The statistic shows the most spoken languages worldwide. +1,500 million people worldwide speak English, of whom only 375 million are native speakers.
Countries where English dominates
How many people learn a language worldwide
Language spread: how does it happen? • Population increase in number of speakers • Migration and or refugees • Colonisation or military conquest & occupation • Commerce and trade • Imposition of language of instruction in education • Mass media & technological use
Organic growth vs. ‘Mergers & acquisitions’ (language spread to discontinuous areas of the
world, mainly through invasion and settlement) (Ostler 2005)
Language contact, loss and death
• Languages are vulnerable to social, political and economic changes affecting their users.
• When languages come into contact, whether by peaceful or hostile means, there is often an unequal power and status relationship.
• The world’s ‘small’ languages are the most vulnerable. • It’s estimated that every 2 weeks a language dies in the world!
Some facts about language death
• When can a language be declared ‘dead’? a language is said to die when its last native speaker dies. At this point the natural cycle of transmission from one generation to the next is broken.
• Between 1490 – 1990 about half the world’s languages ceased to be spoken.
• Of the remaining 5 – 7000 languages, it’s estimated that 50% will die in the next 100 years: on average 1 language death every 2 weeks
(Crystal 2000)
Global English: a Killer language?
Variation within languages
Variations within a language usually involve: accent dialect register
Variation within a language: Accent
• Variation in sounds, pronunciation • Attracts social judgment: positive or negative
“he has a terrible accent”, “she has a lovely speaking voice”
These judgements are only interesting in so far as they tell us about people’s attitudes;
otherwise they are entirely subjective and biased.
What about “Accents are what other people have”?
Actually, it is impossible to speak without an accent!
• Accent variation is linked to social factors: geographical area, social class, education, wealth, gender …
Variation within a language: Dialect
• Variation in grammar & vocabulary (as well as pronunciation) • Every language consists of more than one dialect • All are rule-governed and equally capable of sophisticated expression! • BUT typically, one dialect acquires a prestige status
Variation within a language: Register
• Language variation that reflects particular social situations of use
e.g. buying a coffee, messaging a friend, conversation about the weather, language of a newspaper article, academic writing …
• Shows in word choice and sometimes grammar
Dialect variation in British English
Is it Standard or Non-Standard English? Does it obey grammatical rules?
1. Me and Dave, we was down the pub on Saturday. 2. I were at work all day, where d’you think I were? 3. Dat’s da Emirates, innit? Dat is sick, bruv! 4. Young people don’t do nothing no more
Dialect: “any systematically-differing, rule-governed, grammatical variety shared by a particular speech community within a language”
How and why people change the way they speak
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-22183566/why-people-change-the- way-they-speak
Standards in language
• All dialects of a language are equal in linguistic terms • Typically, one dialect acquires a prestige status
due to the economic/political power of its speakers
• This then becomes the ‘standard’ variety - used in education, the media, administration,
courts of law, literature - prescribed in grammar books & dictionaries
Conclusions
• Ideas and judgements about good & bad language are very common and can be very influential in society.
• Everybody speaks a dialect, including speakers of the standard variety of a language.
• Speakers follow the grammatical rules of the dialect they speak, which may or may not be the standard.
• In English: ‘we was’, ‘I were’, ‘dat is sick’ … etc. are evidence of dialects that are rule-governed, grammatical, systematically different, & shared by a speech community within a language.
For you to research
What is the official language/languages spoken in your country? What other (non-official) languages are spoken widely?
What dialects of your national language exist, as far as you know?
Are there distinctive accents in the language spoken?
What kinds of judgments tend to be made of these accents and dialects?
