»Endangerment,« »loss,« »death,« and related terms are increasingly familiar in descriptions
of sociolinguistic changes now occurring at an unprecedented scale due to
forces of globalization. They can serve both as names for shared concerns of linguists
and anthropologists, and as descriptions of otherwise different scenes of social encounter,
because they are subject to multiple uses and interpretations. This paper focuses on
tacit, enabling assumptions of three distinct strategies for framing and redressing »threats«
to marginalized languages and speech communities. Recognition of their ideological
grounds helps develop a sharper sense of their different uses, and the different social
saliences which linguistic descriptions can have in and for marginalized communities

Joseph Errington

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Coll. Antropol. 28 Suppl. 1 (2004) 43–48UDC 81'27ReviewGetting Language Rights,Shifting Linguistic Traditions*Joseph ErringtonDepartment of Anthropology, Yale University, New Haven, USAA B S T R A C T»Endangerment,« »loss,« »death,« and related terms are increasingly familiar in de-scriptions of sociolinguistic changes now occurring at an unprecedented scale due toforces of globalization. They can serve both as names for shared concerns of linguistsand anthropologists, and as descriptions of otherwise different scenes of social encoun-ter, because they are subject to multiple uses and interpretations. This paper focuses ontacit, enabling assumptions of three distinct strategies for framing and redressing »threats«to marginalized languages and speech communities. Recognition of their ideologicalgrounds helps develop a sharper sense of their different uses, and the different socialsaliences which linguistic descriptions can have in and for marginalized communities.Key words: language rights, language endangerment, diversity, environmentIntroductionGlobal dynamics which endanger lan-guages, cause them to die, and reduce therange of living linguistic diversity, are be-coming an issue of growing concern forlinguists who do not just study but alsotry to help to save them. I believe thatthis is leading to a renewal of old connec-tions between those engaged in descrip-tions of language and culture, at least inthe United States. I discuss this conver-gence here by considering broader per-ceptions and values of endangered lan-guages for those who have different kindsof investments in their futures. This is amatter of critically considering differentrhetorical framings of endangered lan-guages and »language rights,« and thedifferent purposes they can serve by in-voking different senses of community, en-vironment, and identity.There is a clumsy play of words in mytitle which is supposed to signal that myprimary concern is with practical conse-43* This is a shortened version of a paper entitled 'Getting Language Rights: The Rhetorics of Language Endan-germent and Loss’ to appear in American Anthropologist..Received for publication November 25, 2003quences of these ideological differences,since work to procure (or get) rights tospeak a language, requires that one al-ready has a conception of, or get, the na-ture of the rights being sought. I willquickly review three broadly different waysof thinking about language endanger-ment and rights. The first, which empha-sizes naturalness of fit between language,community, and environment, recyclesRomanticist, organic conceptions of lan-guage and culture which Herder pro-pounded in his Essay on the Origin ofLanguage1 and which powerfully shapedearly social anthropology in Britain andthe United States. Now they have newlife in portrayals of languages as naturaloutgrowths of their environments. Thishas for instance become an importantpart of the self-description of the sociolin-guistic activist group called Terralingua,which strongly recall the rhetoric of bio-ecological activist groups like the WorldWildlife Fund. The WWF presents focalimages of what ecologists call charismaticmegafauna – pandas, whales, and so on –to gain public support for efforts to pro-tect not just those fauna, but the ecosys-tems of which they are part. Terralinguain similar manner frames languages, spe-cifically those spoken in ecologically richenvironments, as repositories of valuableecological knowledge, and as emblems ofenvironmentally integrated cultures. Inthis rhetoric lexicons have a special placeas embodiments of collective knowledgeof nature, and so ethnoscience or cogni-tive anthropology takes on new meaningsas a way of documenting local aboriginalknowledge.Language and EnvironmentThe rhetoric which ties language toenvironment or locale has considerablepower, at least for American audiences,but it is also limited in its scope and por-tability. It does not fit well, for instance,languages spoken in environments notcharacterized by ecological megadiversi-ty, for instance subsistence agrariancommunities which have purposely re-duced local ecological diversity in thecourse of cultivating food or cash crops. Italso leads to fine discriminations betweenlanguages which show more or less inti-mate linkages with an environment, as aquick example shows.Sercombe2,3 working in the interior ofBrunei, on the island of Borneo, has de-scribed a group of ethnic Penan whoseolder members, once hunter-gatherers,were sedentarized some thirty-six yearsago. They have transmitted their Penanlanguage to their descendants, who con-tinue to use it among themselves, at leastfor the time being. Closely related dia-lects are also spoken by members of otherstill-nomadic Penan groups in the east-ern, Indonesian parts of the island. Butthe new residential pattern of the speak-ers in question has brought them intoproximity with speakers of Malay andIban, and led, Sercombe says, to an ap-parent loss of ethnobotanical lexicon, andso of lexicalized forest-related knowledgemore generally.This is concomitant with this commu-nity's break from its »natural« environ-ment, even though its current locale is inclose proximity to forests they previouslyinhabited. But the loss of lexical richnesshas made their variety of Penan, relativeto other dialects, a poorer repository oflinguistic diversity, and so presumably aless valuable target, vis-à-vis these otherdialects, for preservation in the name ofecological diversity. Though its speakersare not members of a migrant group inthe usual sense, their language alreadyappears to have been dislocated from itsplace, at least from a strongly environ-mental point of view.Preservation of Linguistic DiversityThe second rhetoric of endangeredlanguages I want to discuss keys to a dif-44J. Errington: Getting Language Rights, Coll. Antropol. 28 Suppl. 1 (2004) 43–48ferent biological metaphor, and anotherkeyword which figures in the title of ourconference: diversity. Unlike the environ-mental rhetoric, which foregrounds uni-tary relations between languages and lo-cales, this second approach emphasizesinstead underlying unity of all languagesas specific manifestations of a universalhuman capacity. It attributes value to thestructural properties of particular lan-guages in the aggregate, rather than inisolation, and portrays the cumulative di-versity of the whole as what is threatenedby the death of any one language, each atoken of a quasi-biological semiotic type.This rhetoric shows an obvious andstrong continuity not just with receivedgoals and methods of contemporary lin-guistics, but with the older nineteenthcentury paradigm of comparative philol-ogy, which I can sketch very briefly herewith reference to one of that discipline'smajor figures, August Schleicher. Schlei-cher developed now canonic styles forpresenting structural evidence and his-torical conclusions about the diversity-within-unity of Indoeuropean languages,and pattern of migrations which led totheir dispersal along with speakers. Contem-porary proponents of work on endangeredlanguages have now globalized this pic-ture of the past, for instance, Nichols'Linguistic diversity in space and time4.Schleicher is also famous as the firstlinguist to have transposed Darwin's nat-ural history of speciation to the study oflinguistic diversity, a linkage which isnow being renewed in work like The riseand fall of languages, Dixon's account5 oflinguistic diversification and death whichhas explicit recourse to the evolutionarybiologist Gould's punctuated equilibriummodel of speciation. Conversely, the sta-tistical ecologist Sutherland6 has descri-bed parallels between the endangermentof languages and species on a global basisby assuming that languages count as dif-ferentiable members of a species, insteadof part of the fabric of shared experiencein communities of speakers.Unlike romanticist approaches to en-dangered languages, which are orientedto preserving languages in their environ-ments, comparativist approaches likethese privilege gathering of data of usefor later study. From this point of view,the problem of language death poses pro-blems for research methods, which hasled to refinements like those proposed byHimmelman7, who argues that two dis-tinct phases of research be recognized:comprehensive documentation on onehand, and data assessment on the other.The same concern with bodies of data,more than communities of speakers, isevident in predictions by Whalen, presi-dent of an American academic cum activ-ist organization called the EndangeredLanguage Fund. Whalen has argued thatnew information about endangered lan-guages will transform theoretical linguis-tics, thanks to the power of computertechnology not just to aid the analysis ofdata sets, but to make them highly portablevia the world wide web.But these linguists need to recognizethat their work can be regarded by othersin less charitable ways. The Americanlinguistic anthropologist Hill8 has rightlypointed out that these do not have to beperceived as neutral interests withoutcollateral effects. She shows why speak-ers of endangered languages can be sus-picious, for instance, of what she calls»hyperbolic valorization« of diversity,which is very common in pronouncementson endangered language. Hinton9 makesthe representative comment that »theworld stands to lose an important part ofthe sum of human knowledge whenever alanguage stops being used.« Claims aboutthe global value of diversity serve tomake each language important to all hu-mans, and so in one way or other givenon-speakers a stake in them, which inturn can justify or license claims of access45J. Errington: Getting Language Rights, Coll. Antropol. 28 Suppl. 1 (2004) 43–48to those languages by linguists, as profes-sional outsiders, whose work is done notin the name of speakers but »the world,«or »humanity« at large. Global claims canappear self-interested for speakers of en-dangered languages who find themselvesdealing with outsiders who may not evenbe concerned to learn to speak their lan-guages. Hill cites as cases in point speak-ers of Hopi and Cupeno, in the AmericanSouthwest, whose felt rights of ownershipof their languages lead them to rejectclaims of access by non-speakers seekingto write down and publish informationabout them. It is worth keeping in mindsimilarities between appeals to the »com-mon linguistic heritage of humanity« onone hand, and claims on the »commonnatural heritage of humanity« on the other,which have been used by governmentsand nongovernmental organizations aroundthe world to license their interference inlocal community access to natural resour-ces.Language Rights IssueThe third and last rhetoric I will dis-cuss centers on languages as objects ofclaims to rights, addressed to some sort ofauthority, sacred or secular. In fact thetranscendent authority of God is invokedby the oldest, perhaps most effective, andperhaps also most intrusive organizationworking to preserve endangered langua-ges, the Summer Institute of Linguistics.The group's so-called Linguistic Creed, byElson10, posted on their website, assertsthat because language is the most dis-tinctly human and basic of God-givencharacteristics, all languages deserveequal respect and careful study, as part ofthe heritage of the human race.Elson is animated by a Protestant doc-trine of salvation through acquaintancewith scriptural truth, and a belief in lan-guage rights which are legitimized throughreligious doxa. Elson is also careful tostipulate the importance of print-literacyin guarding language rights, and it iseasy to read this as one more Western-izing element of missionary projects moregenerally. But it is worth asking by thesame token what sort of attempt to de-fend or establish language rights mightbe made without recourse to print literacy,along with other exogenous media. I willcome back to that question later.Broader, better publicized claims tolanguage rights have been made in thesecular Euro-American tradition, as isevident in the preamble of the 1996 Bar-celona Universal declaration. But I wouldargue that the Barcelona declaration isutopian because it brings about two kindsof crucial contingencies. First, it assumesthat such claims must be recognized aslegitimate by authorities to which theyare addressed, and this is not alwaystrue. During the so-called Asian valuescontroversy of the 1980's for instance,politicians from Singapore and Malaysiacriticized human rights activism as aEuroamerican strategy, thinly disguised,to extend its »soft power« in an age ofpostcolonial imperialism. They counter-posed to it a distinctively reified Asianversion of rights: the rights of the collec-tive – family, community, state – over theindividual. At the same time, a SpeakMandarin campaign in Singapore wasleading descendants of migrants fromsouthern China, who make up the major-ity of the city-state's populace, to aban-don native »dialects« of their ancestors –Hokkien, Hakka, Fujianese, and so on –for Mandarin11. This campaign's successtestifies to their willingness to accede tothe city-state's claims on them as citi-zens, and the legitimacy of the state's val-uations of linguistic difference.The second important salience of theBarcelona declaration involves the shap-ing effects which technologies have onlanguages to which rights are claimed.Even when efforts to preserve languages46J. Errington: Getting Language Rights, Coll. Antropol. 28 Suppl. 1 (2004) 43–48are made with full sensitivity to localvales and autonomy, they can have theeffect of suppressing language difference.One example is the likely linguistic fu-ture of the island of Lombok, just east ofBali. Linguists have roughly distingui-shed five native »dialects« there, underthe rubric Sasak. They form a complexcontinuum, which can be broken downinto two mutually unintelligible groups.Foreign development workers there,seeking to implement their programs infull awareness of the rights of local peopleas active participants, hired a linguistconsultant, Ajamiseba, to help fosterwhat he describes as a local »sense ofownership of what is going to be done inand through the project«12.Ajamiseba determined that one dia-lect, which linguists have come to callNgeno-ngene, should be used in printedmaterial and educational work aroundthe island. In this way he codified that di-alect, de facto, as a proto-standard dialectof bahasa Sasak codified and dissemi-nated via print literacy. Observation ofand respect for social and linguisticrights, in other words, requires work thatmay well lead to language loss. And it ishard to call this a bad thing for, say, amonolingual mother concerned for thehealth of her children in an area whereHepatitis B is endemic.My concern with this example, andthroughout this paper, is to emphasizethe need for sensitivity to the ways thesethree different rhetorics of languagerights play out in local situations. I havethe distinct ideological underpinnings ofthese three ways of getting »languagerights« not in an effort to decenter, de-construct, or debunk any of them. I seekinstead a sharper sense of their uses forframing and perhaps engaging differentkinds of rapid sociolinguistic change. Rec-ognized as something other than globalnames for global goals, each can be morerhetorically effective for representing dif-ferent sorts of sociolinguistic issues fordifferent audiences. Understood as meansit can help open up situated particularswhich should guide decisions about lan-guage related work, including the possi-bility of doing no work at all.R E F E R E N C E S1. HERDER, J., Essay on the Origin of Language.In: On the Origin of Language: Two Essays by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Johann Gottfried Herder.(Frederick Ungar, New York, 1966). – 2. SERCOM-BE, P., Continuity and Adaptation Among the Penanof Brunei. In: SERCOMBE, P., B. SELLATO (Eds.):Borneo's Hunter-Gatherers in the Twenty-First Cen-tury: Peering from the Shadows. (Routledge, London,in press). – 3. SERCOMBE, P.: Linguistic Continuityand Adaptation Among the Penans of Negara BruneiDarussalam. Ph.D. thesis. (Department of MalayStudies, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 2002). – 4.NICHOLS, J.: Linguistic Diversity in Space andTime. (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1992). –5. DIXON, R. M.: The Rise and Fall of Languages.(Cambridge University Press, New York, 1997). – 6.SUTHERLAND, W., Nature 423 (2003) 276. – 7.HIMMELMANN, N., Linguistics 36 (1998) 161. – 8.HILL, J., Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 12(2002) 119. – 9. HINTON, L., Language Revitaliza-tion: An Overview. In: HINTON, L., K. HALLE(Eds.): The Green Book of Language Revitalization inPractice. (Academic Press, New York, 2001). – 10.ELSON, B.: The Linguistic Creed. (http://www.sil.org/sil/linguistic_creed.htm, 1987). – 11. HVITFELD,C., G. POEDJOSOEDARMO, Language Use andIdentity across Generations in Singapore. In: CHEL-LIAH, S., W. DE REUSE (Eds.): Papers from theFifth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Lingui-stics Society. (Tempe, Arizona, 1998). – 12. AJAMI-SEBA, D.: Linguistics for Development Purposes: ACase Study among the Sasak Language Speakers.(National University of Singapore, Singapore, 1996).47J. Errington: Getting Language Rights, Coll. Antropol. 28 Suppl. 1 (2004) 43–48J. ErringtonDepartment of Anthropology, Yale University, P.O. Box 208277 Yale Station, New HavenCT 06524, USAe-mail: j.errington@yale.eduJEZI^NA PRAVA I PROMJENA JEZI^NE TRADICIJES A @ E T A K»Ugro`enost«, »gubitak«, »smrt« i sli~ni pojmovi sve su u~estaliji u opisima socioling-visti~kih promjena koje se danas javljaju u nevi|enoj mjeri kao posljedica globalizacij-skih strujanja. Takvi pojmovi slu`e kao nazivi kojima se izra`avaju obostrani interesjezikoslovaca i antropologa i kao opisni termini za razli~ite dru{tvene situacije budu}ida su podlo`ni vi{estrukoj primjeni i razli~itim interpretacijama. U ovom se ~lankunavode tri razli~ite strategije za smanjivanje ugro`enosti marginaliziranih jezika i go-vornih zajednica. Priznavanje njihovih ideolo{kih temelja pridonosi ve}oj osjetljivostiza njihovu razli~itu primjenu i razvija svijest o dru{tvenom zna~aju kojeg jezi~ni opismo`e imati za marginalizirane zajednice.48J. Errington: Getting Language Rights, Coll. Antropol. 28 Suppl. 1 (2004) 43–48

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