Linguistic sustainability for a multilingual humanity

Transdisciplinary analogies and metaphors are potential useful tools for thinking and creativity. The exploration of other conceptual philosophies and fields can be rewarding and can contribute to produce new useful ideas to be applied on different problems and parts of reality. The development of the so-called 'sustainability' approach allows us to explore the possibility of translate and adapt some of its main ideas to the organisation of human language diversity. The concept of 'sustainability' clearly comes from the tradition of thinking that criticises the perspective of economic development that overlooks almost totally the natural environment -the precise context where this development takes place -and which thus leads it to a final end devoid of resources and clearly harmful for the life of human beings. Against this economicist view, which is blind to its very important side effects, some academic and activist enclaves have proposed the perspective of 'sustainable development' or 'lasting development'. In other words, they have theorised, constructed, and begun to practice an economic and urbanistic development respectful of, integrated into, and in keeping with the dynamics of nature. Such perspective provides a way of improving the material aspects of human life while at the same time not damaging other environmental aspects still more necessary and fundamental for the quality —and even for the simple possibility- of human existence. In fact, the view is a synthesis of possible opposed patterns. It does not renounce material and economic improvement, but nor does it exclude a fully healthy environment that is appropriate for the continuation of the species. If we now try to transfer and to apply this way of thinking to the linguodiversity reality, are there useful analogies and metaphors to be made? We believe there are, and ones that can be used to good advantage, and linked, moreover, to the traditions of thought that have always been present but perhaps even more so these last years with the drive to develop the thinking we are calling ‘eco-linguistic’. From the outset, we would underscore the will to connect apparent ‘opposites’ in an integrative conceptualisation, such as the very syntagm ‘sustainable development’. On the sociolinguistic plane, our debate should probably be about our ‘opposites’, which could be on the one hand the expansion of the dominant languages and, on the other hand, the maintenance and development of human linguistic diversity

Toward 'Complexics' as a transdiscipline

The proposed transdisciplinary field of ‘complexics’ would bring together all contemporary efforts in any specific disciplines or by any researchers specifically devoted to constructing tools, procedures, models and concepts intended for transversal application that are aimed at understanding and explaining the most interwoven and dynamic phenomena of reality. Our aim needs to be, as Morin says, not “to reduce complexity to simplicity, [but] to translate complexity into theory”. New tools for the conception, apprehension and treatment of the data of experience will need to be devised to complement existing ones and to enable us to make headway toward practices that better fit complexic theories. New mathematical and computational contributions have already continued to grow in number, thanks primarily to scholars in statistical physics and computer science, who are now taking an interest in social and economic phenomena. Certainly, these methodological innovations put into question and again make us take note of the excessive separation between the training received by researchers in the ‘sciences’ and in the ‘arts’. Closer collaboration between these two subsets would, in all likelihood, be much more energising and creative than their current mutual distance. Human complexics must be seen as multi-methodological, insofar as necessary combining quantitative-computation methodologies and more qualitative methodologies aimed at understanding the mental and emotional world of people. In the final analysis, however, models always have a narrative running behind them that reflects the attempts of a human being to understand the world, and models are always interpreted on that basis

Diversidade, contato e ecologia linguística: Uma aproximação a apartir da complexidade sociocognitiva

Resumo A perspectiva ecológica para os estudos linguísticos vem se monstrando eficaz, principalmente nos estudos sobre a diversidade e o contato de línguas, já que nos leva a uma ampliação teórica e conceitual no âmbito desta ciência e também ao aumento da consciência social quanto à preservação, aceitação e normalização da diversidade linguística dos humanos. Neste artigo, após ser apresentada a perspectiva ecológica para a linguística, serão discutidos os aspectos multidimensionais para a análise do contato de línguas, estando relacionados com a temática do sociocognitivismo, da dinamicidade e processualidade, oferecendo, desta maneira, uma visão integradora para os estudos linguísticos que é a da 'diversidade linguística'

Minority language communities in the age of globalisation: Rethinking the organisation of human language diversity

Presentat com a comunicació al European Science Foundation Exploratory Workshop, Bath, U.K., 2001Having overcome traditional geopolitical barriers, we peoples of this planet now find ourselves in very fortuitous circumstances for trying to come together and organise cohabitation based on common values and the building of relationships that are equitable and constructive in all senses. In linguistic terms, this new situation calls into question the ideological preconceptions that have thus far sustained mankind¿s communication. New principles are explored for the organisation of a multilingual humanity in its different sociopolitical levels

Planning Change in Code-Switching: Theoretical and Practical Inferences from the Catalan Case

The linguistic normalization processes presently being developed in the Iberian Peninsula are important sociolinguistic experiences of a great scientific interest, both from the applied and theoretical focus angles. The conducti ve badies of all processes demand clear and accurate theoretical foundations in order to follow a course of action. The discipline of sociolinguistics as such - that is, as a scientific discipline-, demands constant analysis and reflectien concerning the different situations existing, so as to mak.e headway in the deep and encompassing knowledge regarding this area of reality. Theory and practice prove in this case, as in many others, that they are very closely related to one another, to the point of mutual dependance. The present sociolinguistic situation in Catalonia offers many theoretical and practical potential contributions. Within this interesting range we selected the problem of planned modification of inter-personal linguistic behaviours of the ethnic-linguistic autochthonous group regarding their usual l relationship with the numerous individuals of non-Catalan origin who live at present in Catalonia. This is an issue of great importance today in our country, and, very possibly, not sufficiently studied at an international leve

The Relation between Linguistic Context, Behaviour and Competence: The Second Generation of Castilian-Speaking Immigrants in Non-Metropolitan Catalonia

A study of the process of bilingualization of second-generation immigrants to Catalonia, a region of Spain, is described and summarized. The study looks at the interrelationships between (1) linguistic context, all sources of messages in natural speech; (2) linguistic behavior, the real communicative use the individual makes of his expressive faculties in the language; and (3) linguistic competence, the combination of knowledge and capacity allowing the individual to undevstand and utter messages in the language. These variables are examined as they relate to the acquisition of Catalan by Castilian-speaking immigrants' children. The report begins with a general geographic and demographic background and a description of the study's design. The second chapter presents information on the demography and the three linguistic variables examined in the town under study. The third and fourth chapters present analyses of the relationships between the three variables. The fifth chapter outlines the study's conclusions and observations. A bibliography, the data-collection instruments, notes on oral and written responses to the tests ilsed, and extensive statistical tables are appended

Complexitat i fenomen (socio)linguístic

Intermediate phenomena of reality present particular characteristics of systemic self-organization, multilevel interrelations, recursivity, emergence of new «objects» with properties different from those of the elements that form them, and evolutionary dynamics, that probably need the formulation of new theoretical concepts and different paradigm principles. The sciences or perspectives of complexity, or the «complex» thinking, try to respond adequately to this complexity of reality. This approach adopts a multidimensional, integrated and dynamic view of reality: the world is made up of overlapping levels of different elements which produce new properties or new organizations at higher levels. If we conceive what we call languages as simple and decontextualized objects, we can understand some of the more mechanical aspects but we will ignore their conditions of existence, functionality, maintenance, variation, change and extinction

The ecology of language contact: Minority and majority languages

The most important contributions of linguistic ecology to our understanding of contact between ‘majority’ and ‘minority/minoritized’ language groups are the result of the broad, dynamic perspective that the ecosystemic view can give. Research should focus on the application of the principle of ‘subsidiarity’ in the field of linguistic communication (a more ‘global’ language should not do anything a ‘local’ language can do). From this approach, a sustainable contact will be that which does not produce linguistic use in allochthonous language at a speed and/or pressure so high as to make impossible the stable continuity of the autochthonous languages of human groups