LINGUIS R1B Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Peter Ladefoged, Language Death, Land Management
19 Jun 2017
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Krauss: language extinction is underrated (biological species are less threatening but get more concern) + rate of language death is increasing. Ladefoged: linguists should not know what"s best for people + language can be a price to pay for national development. Dorian: working with languages itself is political + a loss is a loss no matter what. Linguists are the only link between a dying language and the future generation. Both ladefoged and dorian did not express agreement to the biological parallel. Dorian: biological dna is irretrievable, languages can be archived and resurrected. Monolingual regions still have conflicts; a global lingua franca cannot eliminate the pride that leads to ambition and conflict. People would want their language to stay and the others to go, by different religious / nationalistic reasons. Introduce model with global lingua franca and ethnic languages coexisting. One language for intelligibility, another language for identity. All languages are capable of great expressive powers.
