6.

Societal Multilingualism

6.1. Multilingualism
6.2. Patterns of Use
6.3. Language and Ethnic Identity
6.4. Language and Politics
6.5. Language Rights
6.6. Diglossia
6.7. Pidgin and Creole
6.8. Lingua Franca
Questions for Discussion

6.1. Multilingualism

Most countries have more than one language that is spoken by a significant part of the population, and most languages have
significant numbers of speakers in more than one country. Europe is constantly changing, as a result of mobility, migration and
globalisation. It is estimated that today there are at least 175 nationalities within the EU borders. Migration and mobility have
brought about changes in the linguistic landscape of Europe, Canada, the USA, making multilingualism an increasingly common
reality, and highlighting the need for new policies and projects that take into account linguistic diversity.

There are several types of societal multilingualism. The most common type occurs when a country or region consists of several
language groups, each of which is primarily monolingual. Canada is a good example. In such a case, the nation as a whole is
multilingual but not all individuals are necessarily multilingual. The situation has been referred to as the territorial principle of
multilingualism. On the other hand, multilingualism can be based on the personality principle, that is, where multilingualism is
the
official
policy
of
a
country
and
most
individuals
are
multilingual.

Historically, multilingual communities evolve in a number of ways. One is the result of migration, the voluntary
or involuntary movements of people speaking one language into the territory of people speaking another one.
Involuntary migration or forced movement of population was common in the ancient Middle East, as it is
recorded in the biblical account of the Babylonian exile, and has continued to be a significant force accounting
for multilingual communities.

In the 19th century, the British policy of bringing Indian workers to the Fijians sugar plantations led to Fijis current
division between speakers of the native indigenous Fijian dialect and Hindi-speaking descendants of the original
plantation workers. In the 20 th century the Soviet policy of forced movement of population assured that many of the
newly independent countries are faced with the challenge to learn another language, e.g. in the Baltic states it is
the Russian immigrants, once the rulers, now have to learn the now dominant Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian.

Voluntary migration has produced major changes in the

linguistic make-up of many countries in the world. The
USA, as the worlds foremost receiver of voluntary
immigration, grew quickly into a multilingual society,
constantly assimilating large numbers of immigrants. In
the 19th and early 20th centuries, the USA absorbed large
communities of speakers of German, Norwegian, Greek,
Italian, Yiddish, Polish, Ukrainian, Japanese, various
Chinese languages and Spanish. The rate of absorption was
slowed down after 1923, when strict immigration laws
were passed. There was some relaxation of this policy in
the post-war period, including an influx of South East
Asian speakers of Vietnamese, Cambodian and other
languages, and a recent wave of immigrants from the
former USSR. Most of these groups have acquired English
and many have given up on their traditional languages.

Migration from the countryside or from small towns to the large metropolitan cities that have grown everywhere
in the 20th century is another major cause of multilingual communities. In the developing countries as well as in
the developed countries, this movement is creating huge cities with populations of millions, attracting complex
patterns of multilingualism and producing major problems for social, economic and political development. As
African cities expand at an increasing rate, they also become highly multilingual.

Multilingualism has also been historically created by conquest and the later incorporation of speakers of different languages into a
single political unit. The spread of English power over the British Isles produced multilingualism and led to the loss of some Celtic
languages. The conquest of Central and South America by the Spaniards and the Portuguese eventually produced countries with large
native minorities, some still speaking many Indian languages. Colonial policies also led to multilingual states. When the major
European powers divided up Africa in the 19th century they drew boundaries that left most post-independent states without a single
majority language, and usually with languages that had many speakers outside as well as inside the new state borders.

Thus, they opened the way for a tendency to adopt the colonial governments metropolitan language as a needed one. One classic case is Switzerland where
speakers of French, German and Italian formed a multilingual state. These diverse historical circumstances have produced many different kinds of multilingual
mixes, sometimes stable and sometimes short-lived. The most common result of this language contact has been language conflict, producing pressure from
one language on speakers of the other languages to adopt it. This pressure, whether the result of a planned policy or the effect of unplanned factors, has
produced challenges to social structure that many people have begun to worry about. The study of language maintenance and of language shift has thus
become a central concern of sociolinguists interested in multilingual societies.

6.2. Patterns of Use

All the languages in the repertoire of a multilingual community are not equally distributed in terms of power, prestige, vitality, or
attitude. In other words, some languages are more valued than the others are. This phenomenon is referred to as the asymmetric
principle of multilingualism. The languages in a multilingual society are arranged on a hierarchy. The position of a given language
on this hierarchy is determined pragmatically. The larger the number of desired roles a language enables its speakers to play in a
given society, the higher its place on the hierarchy. The more restricted the range of valued roles a language provides, the lower
its place on the hierarchy.

This principle can be illustrated with some examples from India. In the Indian society, the verbal repertoire (the total range of
linguistic resources available to an individual or a community) of an educated multilingual may consist of a large number of languages.
An individual might speak a rural or a caste dialect at home with the members of the family and people from an extended kinship that
may be called native place network. This dialect serves to establish an ethnic identity; it may have no written literature or even script.
In addition to learning it, the individual will learn English, which empowers him to gain access to higher education, to communicate on
an interstate and international level. English also provides national and international mobility as a job candidate.

However, an Indian will study Hindi, which is the chief language of Indian films, a useful lingua franca (a common language used
by speakers of different language backgrounds) to communicate with North Indian States, and increasingly the official language of
the federal government. The speaker might also learn the classical language Sanskrit to access, preserve and symbolise the
classical lore of India in many fields from religion to medicine. Thus, in a multilingual society each language uniquely fulfils certain
roles and represents distinct identities, and all of them complement one another to serve the complex communicative demands of
a pluralistic society.

The languages of a multilingual community are differentially evaluated on the basis of the habitual associations between the languages and the domains of
their use. If the domains in which a language is used are highly valued, then that language is perceived to be highly valued and vice versa. For example,
the habitual use of Sanskrit in ritualistic and intellectual contexts by the most prestigious group in the Indian social system over thousands of years has
given the language the status of a sacred, intellectual language. English, on the other hand, because of the colonial history and association with such
valued domains as administration, science and technology, international business, Western culture and pop entertainment, is perceived as all-powerful and
as
a
ticket
to
upward
mobility.

However, it is important to mention that evaluation of

languages in multilingual societies is not always based on
materialistic criteria. The revival of Hebrew in Israel, the
struggle to re-establish Catalan and Basque in Spain, the
movement to revitalise Sanskrit in India, and the
continued maintenance of home languages by many
groups of migrants over the centuries are reminders that
such factors as tribal, caste, ethnic and national identities
are also powerful forces in the use, maintenance, revival
and regulation of languages. Movements, often quite
successful, now exist in many parts of the world aimed at
gaining recognition and status for indigenous languages
side-lined or oppressed during colonial and postcolonial
regimes (Malaysia, the Philippines, Ecuador, Bolivia, some
ex-Soviet states).

These movements typically take the form of a demand for

extending the functional range of indigenous languages to
include domains of power, authority and prestige by their
use in education, administration and the legal system.
Concomitantly, there are efforts to prevent hegemonic
languages from usurping smaller languages by restricting
the domains of use of the more prevalent languages. The
dynamics of language in a multilingual society reflect the
evolution of power in that society. Thus, the languages of
a multilingual society exist in a state of tension with one
another that involves shifts in functional range.

6.3. Language and Ethnic Identity

One of the most common ways of identifying a person is by language. As language is inherently involved in socialization, the social
group whose language you speak is an important identity group for you. Language is special in forming ones identity as it organises
thought
and
establishes
social
relations.
Multilingual societies face conflict over language choice due to practical, political and economic reasons. The speakers of a language
are in a stronger position when their language is used for national or international communication, for government, trade, education.

Ethnic groups regularly use language as one of their most significant identifying features. Commonly, the name of an ethnic group
and its language are the same. Most ethnic groups believe that their language is the best medium to preserve and express their
traditions. In many cases, linguistic characteristics may be the most important defining criteria for ethnic-group membership.
Thus, it is less accurate to say that Greeks speak Greek than to state that people who are native speakers of Greek (who have
Greek as their mother tongue) are generally considered to be Greek (at least by other Greeks) whatever their actual official
nationality.

In other cases, particular where different varieties of the same language are concerned, the connection between language and ethnic
identity may be a simple one of habitual association, reinforced by social barriers between the groups, where language is an important
identifying characteristic. By no means all American Blacks speak African American Vernacular English, but the overwhelming majority
of those who do speak it are Blacks, and can be identified as such from their speech alone. Ethnic-group differentiation in a mixed
community, then, is particular type of social differentiation and, as such, will often have linguistic differentiation associated with it.

Cases of the first type, where language is a defining characteristic of ethnic-group membership are very common on a world scale.
Situations of this type are very usual in multilingual Africa. In one suburb outside Accra in Ghana, there are native speakers of more
than eighty different languages. In most cases, individuals will identify themselves as belonging to a particular ethnic group or tribe on
the basis of which of these many languages is their mother tongue (although the majority of the inhabitants are bi- or tri-lingual). The
different ethnic groups therefore maintain their separateness and identity as much through language as anything else.

In cases of the second type, the separate identity of ethnic groups is signalled not by different languages, but by different varieties of the same language.
Differences of this type may originate in the same sorts of mechanisms as are involved in the maintenance of social-class dialects: we can suppose that
ethnic group differentiation acts as a barrier to the communication of linguistic features in the same way as other social barriers. In the case of ethnic
groups, moreover, attitudinal factors are likely to be of considerable importance. Individuals are much more likely to be aware of the fact that they are
Jewish or consider themselves Black than they are to recognise that they are lower middle class. This means that ethnic-group membership and identity
may
be
an
important
social
fact
for
them.

6.4. Language and Politics

Language is frequently used in the exercise of political power. A government can attempt to control its minority groups by banning their language, as Turkey bans
the use of Kurdish by one of its larger minorities. By making the voting material available in Spanish and other minority languages, the USA Federal Voting Act
tried to increase minority participation in government. By offering extra pay to federal Civil servants who knew both English and French, the Canadian
government attempted to weaken the demand for Quebec separatism. By requiring all its citizens to pass examinations in Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian, the
newly independent Baltic States attempted to redress the balance of power for indigenous citizens over the large Russian minority populations that were
dominant during the period of Soviet rule. The issue of language choice is most critical in the case of newly independent states.

There are some subtle uses of language in politics. The use of a regional dialect by a political leader
is often a claim to a specialized ethnic identity. Thus, some Labour Party politicians in England have
sometimes used regional accents to mark dissociation from middle-class speech and values.

6.5. Language Rights

The issue of language rights provides an opportunity to attempt to view language contact and conflict ethically rather than
scientifically. A favoured approach by some linguists is the right of a language, like any other endangered species, to survive. As each
language incorporates some unique features derived from the rich and varied experience of human beings, language loss is regarded as
seriously as the loss of an animal or bird species. Anthropological linguists have worked to preserve as much of a language as possible
while there is still one speaker alive (in grammar textbooks, dictionaries, collections of texts). Every support is provided to the
speakers of a language in their efforts at reversing language shift.

Another approach is focusing on the rights of the speakers of the language to use it and their rights to maintain it by teaching it to their children. To the extent
that a state recognises the rights of its citizens to access to work, health care, housing, education, justice, democracy, so it must take care to deal with the
potential lessening or blocking of these rights for those who do not speak, read or write the official language. One way to recognise this right is by providing
adequate instruction in the official language to all who do not control it (not just children, but new immigrants, temporary foreign workers). Another way is by
providing interpreting and translating services to those who have not yet learned the official language. Therefore, the first language right is the right to learn the
official language, and in the meantime, to be assisted in dealing with those situations where lack of control of it leads to serious handicaps .

A second right is not to be discriminated against in access to work, education, justice or health service on the basis of being identified as a member of a
group speaking another language. This right is part of a larger right not to be discriminated against on the basis of group membership, religion, gender,
ethnic
group
etc.
A third right concerns the right of a group of speakers of a language to preserve and maintain their own favoured language or variety, and to work to
reverse any language shift to the status or prestige variety. Here, a potential conflict between the rights of individuals and groups might appear. A group
may
wish
to
preserve
its
language,
but
individual
members
may
prefer
to
shift
to
the
dominant
language.

6.6. Diglossia

The clearest example of language choice according to domain is diglossia, a situation in which two or more languages (or varieties of the same language) in a
speech community are allocated to different social functions and contexts. When Latin was the language of education and religious services in England, for
example,
English
and
Latin
were
in
a
diglossic
relationship.
In linguistics, diglossia is a situation where, in a given society, there are two (often) closely-related languages, one of high prestige, which is generally used by
the government and in formal texts, and one of low prestige, which is usually the spoken vernacular tongue. The high-prestige language tends to be the more
formalised,
and
its
forms
and
vocabulary
often
'filter
down'
into
the
vernacular, though
often
in
a
changed
form.

The term diglossie (French) was first coined (as a translation of Greek diglossa 'bilingualism') by the Greek linguist and
eroticist Ioannis Psycharis. In Charles Ferguson's article "Diglossia" in the journal Word (1959), diglossia was described as a
kind of bilingualism in a given society, in which one of the languages is (H), i.e. has high prestige, and another of the
languages is (L), i.e. has low prestige. In Ferguson's definition, (H) and (L) are always closely related. (H) is usually the
written language whereas (L) is the spoken language. In formal situations, (H) is used; in informal situations, (L) is used.

Ferguson cites the following examples of a diglossic situation: classical Arabic (H) and colloquial Arabic (L), standard German (H) and
Swiss German (L) in Switzerland, standard French (H) and Haitian Creole (L). Ferguson states that one of the most important features of
diglossia is the specialization of function for (H) and (L). In some situations only (H) variety is appropriate and in others only (L) variety.
On the example of Arabic, he shows that the H variety is used in church and mosque sermons, political speeches, university lectures,
news broadcasts, newspaper editorials, while the L variety is used to give instructions to waiters, servants and clerks, in personal
letters, in conversations with friends and family members, in soap operas, in folk literature.

The relationship between H and L can be summarised as follows:

1. There is a specialization of function for H and L.
2. H has a higher level of prestige than L, and is considered superior.
3. There is a literary heritage in H, but not in L.
4. There are different circumstances of acquisition; children learn L at home, and H in school.
5. The H variety is standardized, with a tradition of grammatical study and established norms and orthography.
6. The grammar of the H variety is more complex, more highly inected.
7. H and L varieties share the bulk of their vocabularies, but there is some complementary distribution of terms.
8. The phonology of H and L is a single complex system.

The differences in use suppose differences in form. The grammar of L variety is generally simpler. There are also major differences in
the vocabulary of the two varieties. One of the major differences is in the prestige of the two varieties. The H language is associated
generally with a body of important literature and carries with it the prestige of a great tradition or religion. It is more stable being
protected from change by written texts and by an educational system. It is also used over a wider region and thus can serve some
unifying purpose. The L varieties are more localized and show dialectal variation and the tendency to change of unwritten dialects.

Diglossia thus refers to a society that has divided up its domains into two distinct groups, using linguistic differences to mark the boundaries and offering two
clear identities to the members of the community. It is important to note the political situations in which diglossia often occurs, with the H language associated
with power. Educational pressure is normally in the direction of the H variety, and those who cannot master it are usually socially marginalised.
It is essential to mark the difference between code switching and diglossia here. Diglossia occurs across domain boundaries, and code switching occurs within
domains. In diglossic situations, people can be quite aware that they have switched from H to L variety or vice versa, whereas code switching is quite
unconscious.

6.7. Pidgin and Creole

Pidgin, or contact language, is the name given to any language created, usually spontaneously, out of a mixture of other
languages as a means of communication between speakers of different tongues. Pidgins develop as a means of communication
between people who do not have a common language. They have reduced grammatical structures and restricted vocabulary,
serving as auxiliary contact languages. They are improvised rather than learned natively. The appearance of a pidgin is marked by
the fact that it is not a native language of anyone, but is learned only in contact situations by people who normally continue to
speak their own language inside their own community.

A pidgin is a social rather than individual solution. Each speaker makes his own mistakes and compromises. A pidgin
involves the mixture of two or more languages. Sometimes the grammatical system is based more or less on one
language and the vocabulary is largely taken from another. In all cases, grammar is simplified. The creation of a pidgin
usually requires: prolonged, regular contact between the different language communities; a need to communicate
between them; an absence of (or absence of widespread proficiency in) a widespread, accessible inter-language.

Several reasons for the development of pidgin languages may be mentioned; however, all of them are related to history. In the nineteenth century,
when slaves from Africa were brought over to North America to work on the plantations, they were separated from the people of their community
and mixed with people of various other communities, therefore they were unable to communicate with each other. The strategy behind this was
that because of lack of communications they could not conspire to escape back to their land. Therefore, in order to finally communicate with their
peers on the plantations, and with their bosses, they needed to form a language in which they could communicate.

Pidgins also arose because of colonization. Prominent languages such as French, Spanish,
Portuguese, English, and Dutch were the languages of the colonizers. They travelled, and
set up ports in coastal towns where shipping and trading routes were accessible.

There is always a dominant language which contributes

most of the vocabulary of the pidgin; this is called the
superstrate language. This is the language of a later
invading people that is imposed on an indigenous
population and contributes features to their language. The
other minority languages that contribute to the pidgin are
called the substrate languages. Speakers of the
substrate will use some version of the superstrate, at
least in more formal contexts. The substrate may survive
as a second language for informal conversation. As
demonstrated by the fate of many replaced European
languages (such as Etruscan, Breton, and Venetian), the
influence of the substrate on the official speech is often
limited to pronunciation and a modest number of
loanwords. The substrate might even disappear altogether
without leaving any trace

In many social circumstances, pidgins have become quite stable over time. Spoken only as second languages and functioning in
limited domains as languages of wider communication, they are learned informally in contact and used especially as trade
languages. In multilingual areas, where each of the existing language group maintains its distinctiveness, the pidgin continues to
develop. This occurs as a result of intermarriage of a couple whose native languages are different, but who both speak pidgin. The
pidgin is spoken at home and learned by children as a first or mother tongue. In terms of contemporary linguistics, this leads to
some fundamental changes.

Children acquiring the language do so in the same way that children acquire any other language. New features emerge. It is no longer just a contact
language with limited social functions, but is called to deal with an increasingly wide range of social needs. The process is called creolisation, as the
language develops having greater phonological and grammatical complexity. At this stage, the language is no longer a pidgin, as it has acquired the full
complexity of a human language, and becomes a Creole. Thus, a Creole is a language descended from a pidgin that has become the native language of
a group of people. The majority of Creole languages are based on English, Portuguese, French, Spanish and other languages.

Often creoles can then replace the existing mix of languages to become the native language of the current community (such as Krio in Sierra Leone and Tok
Pisin in Papua New Guinea). However, pidgins do not always become creolesthey can die out or become obsolete.
Pidgin English was the name given to a Chinese-English-Portuguese pidgin used for commerce in Canton during the 18th and 19th centuries. In Canton, this
contact language was called Canton English. It was also referred to as chinglish ("Chinese English") or engrish ("English Chinese"). The most well-known pidgin
used in America is the now creolized Hawaiian Pidgin where locals mixed the traditional dialect of Hawaiian with English, Japanese, Portuguese, and other languages.

One controversy in sociolinguistics has been over the origin of the variety of English associated with the speech of Afro-Americans. For many years, it was
assumed to be a non-standard social dialect similar to and based on the Southern regional dialects of American English, and reflecting the social isolation and
inadequate education of the former slaves. Some linguists pointed to certain features, such as the absence of the verb to be in the present tense, or different
rules of verb agreement, or the use of double negatives, as evidence of linguistic inferiority and justification for discrimination against the speakers of this
variety. But these features are common in standard languages (Russian the absence of the verb to be in the present, French negatives are usually double). This
fact supports a theory that Black English derives from an original Creole and argues for its status as a separate language and its recognition and maintenance.

6.8. Lingua Franca

Lingua franca was originally a common language consisting of Italian mixed with French, Spanish, Greek, and Arabic that was formerly
spoken in Mediterranean ports. It is a pidgin, a trade language used by numerous language communities to communicate with others
whose language they did not speak. It can, in fact, be considered the mother of all pidgins, seemingly in use since the Middle Ages and
surviving until the nineteenth century, when it disappeared with hardly a trace. Like other pidgins, it had a limited vocabulary and a
sharply circumscribed grammar, and lacked those things, such as verb tenses and case endings, that add specificity to human speech.

In modern interpretation, a lingua franca is any language that is used as a means of communication by groups who do not
themselves normally speak that language; for example, English is a lingua franca used by Japanese doing business in Finland, or by
Swedes in Saudi Arabia. Many of the worlds lingua francas are pidgin or trade languages; for example, Bazaar Hindi (Hindustani),
Bazaar Malay, and Neo-Melanesian (also known as Tok Pisin), which became the official language of Papua New Guinea.

The original lingua franca was a tongue actually called Lingua Franca (or Sabir) that was employed for commerce in the
Mediterranean area during the Middle Ages. Now extinct, it had Italian as its base with a mixture of words from Spanish, French,
Greek, and Arabic. The designation Lingua Franca [language of the Franks] came about because the Arabs in the medieval period
used to refer to Western Europeans in general as Franks. Occasionally the term lingua franca is applied to a fully established
formal
language;
thus,
formerly
it
was
said
that
French
was
the
lingua
franca
of
diplomacy.