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negative perception that many endangered language speakers have with regard to their language. The first is the idea of a linguistic survival of the fittest, or a “Social Darwinism of language” as Dorian calls it. Some people believe that, as with the natural world, languages that are more suitable for high levels of thinking and expression will eventually take over weaker languages; most of the languages that are considered to be the “fittest” are the dominant European languages like English, Spanish, and French. This theory is doubtable for a number of reasons. First, unlike animals in nature, which must occupy separate habitats to some extent, multiple languages can coexist in one, multilingual speaker. Secondly, the language most commonly cited as the “fittest,” English, is very difficult to learn as a second language due to its irregularities, so it is hard to argue that it is the best language for clear expression; similarly, Mandarin Chinese, the language with the most native speakers, is also very difficult to learn. Finally, the powerful languages of many great civilizations, like Ancient Greek and Sumerian, have died out, showing that the “fittest” languages do not always survive. 34 While it is clear that the theory of the survival of the fittest does not apply to language, it is nonetheless a commonly held view that discourages individuals, communities, and governments from attempting to save endangered languages. A second common belief that encourages language endangerment is the idea that bilingualism is an unhealthy situation for a speaker. Some contend that it is only possible to have full command of one language and that bilinguals cannot truly speak either language. in order to learn a politically or economically dominant language, according to this belief, a speaker must give up his or her mother tongue. 35 Numerous studies have proven that multilingualism actually grants cognitive benefits to speakers, who have stronger cognitive functioning and resist the mental effects of aging more easily. This negative perception of bilingualism, however, still remains strong in some parts of the world. 36 On the one hand, this false belief encourages speakers of minority languages to stop speaking their first language and to avoid teaching it to their children in the hopes that they can achieve full command of the dominant language. On the other hand, it also prevents state policy from attempting to protect minority languages from endangerment or extinction in the process of teaching the dominant language. The most significant cause of language endangerment today, and the cause with the most modern factors, is the cultural assimilation and linguistic dominance that accompanies urbanization and globalization. The past century has seen an unprecedented shift in the global population away from rural villages to urban centers. In these cities, a lingua franca is necessary for communication across tribal, ethnic, and linguistic groups, and this language is almost exclusively the dominant majority language. Urbanization thus leads to language endangerment in two ways: the decline in the number of speakers in the original communities and the abandonment of the indigenous language upon relocation to cities. 37 The phenomenon of the loss of native traditions, including language, through urbanization is referred to as cultural dislocation. 38 The effects of urbanization are closely related to those of industrialization as well; the mass labor in the factories that employ many of the new residents of these cities must communicate using one language, which usually ends up being the language of the majority population and of the elite. 39 Globalization has had an effect on minority languages similar to that of urbanization, as the two phenomena are very closely related. Today, the growth of multinational companies and the necessity of communicating across borders in virtually all fields have ensured that opportunities for socioeconomic 16 Melbourne Host Directorate PTY LTD | Office of Media and Design
improvement are available exclusively in dominant languages. 40 today, the most dominant language across the world is English, but Spanish, French, and Portuguese are also languages that have provided employment for indigenous populations. in the process of learning a dominant language as a method of socioeconomic improvement, many minorities stop speaking their indigenous language either through disuse or active abandonment, a phenomenon called social dislocation. 41 Often, the economic effects of globalization on minority languages are tied closely to other causes of language endangerment. Because most African countries offer no education in indigenous languages, for example, minority populations must start using the dominant language if they wish to attend secondary school or university and hold a well-paying job. The dislocation of a population because of a natural disaster can also lead to the abandonment of indigenous languages and their subsequent endangerment, as the speakers often must utilize a different language to find employment in their new home. 42 Additionally, globalization can also lead to language endangerment through exposure to advertising, newspapers, and television in the dominant language of the state. Many indigenous languages lack their own media, so speakers of these languages are consistently exposed to information in the dominant language via radio, television, and newspapers, which can contribute to the disuse of the mother tongue and the adoption of the dominant language. 43 As is obvious in their descriptions, the causes of language endangerment are by no means mutually exclusive; in fact, they almost always interact to reduce the number of speakers of an indigenous language and eventually eliminate the language altogether. An official policy against an indigenous language, for example, may reduce the economic opportunities available in that language, which encourages speakers to abandon their mother tongue for the dominant language. Alternatively, the idea that bilingualism is unhealthy may lead to negative self-perception by speakers of both a dominant and a minority language and cause them to pass only the dominant language onto their children. Thus, when evaluating an instance of language endangerment, it is vital to examine all of the factors, political, economic, and psychological, that have led to the decay of a specific language. Current Situation Given the numerous causes for language endangerment outlined above, it is not surprising that more languages are nearing extinction than ever before. There are a number of ways to quantify the issue of language endangerment, and each method reveals an additional aspect of the problem. The first way to quantify language endangerment is by examining the number of speakers of both the dominant languages that are driving indigenous languages toward extinction and the indigenous languages themselves. Fortunately, the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) has been publishing a book of statistics on language since 1951 entitled Ethnologue: Languages of the World. According to an analysis of the Ethnologue by David Crystal about ten years ago, eight languages (Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, English, Bengali, Hindi, Portuguese, Russian, and Japanese) each have over 100 million speakers and together have nearly 2.4 billion. With the next twelve on the Ethnologue’s list, the top twenty languages encompass half of the world’s population. 44 As Crystal’s analysis was completed with data from 1999, these figures are even higher today. the Ethnologue’s 2009 edition reveals that over 94% of the world’s population speaks 5.6% of the world’s languages, those with more than one million speakers. 45 These figures show just how widespread the international dominant languages have become. Conversely, the distribution of indigenous 17 Melbourne Host Directorate PTY LTD | Office of Media and Design
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