Content area
Full text
There is a global language system that is a neglected part of the overall international system, according to Abram de Swaan, chairman of the Amsterdam School of Social Science Research at the University of Amsterdam. This book analyzes the nature of that global system in the first three chapters, followed by five chapters of case studies and ending with a chapter of "Conclusions and considerations." The concept of a global language system has been articulated by the author in some previous articles, but the treatment here is much more systematic and complete, and as a result more impressive. In a word, this book is important and deserves very careful attention.
The book's ambitious topic successfully integrates the social sciences with language, making the author a leader in the political sociology of language. The first three chapters develop this interdisciplinary approach by shaping a theoretical framework to guide the five case studies in subsequent chapters. The first chapter elaborates the concept of the global language system by identifying and ranking major linguistic groups in a hierarchy of global languages, which together constitute the global language constellation. At the top of the global language hierarchy is a "hypercentral" language, English, which allegedly holds the entire world language system together. Next in the hierarchy are about a dozen "supercentral" languages. Below and subordinate to the hypercentral language and the supercentral languages are "peripheral" languages, which are linked to the former through multilingualism. This language constellation is inherently unstable, especially because the language at the top, English, tends to expand at the expense of lesser languages. Yet although language diversity can be a casualty of such rivalry, the spread of central languages increases communication possibilities.
Chap. 2 adds the perspective of the political economy of language by elaborating the concept of the "Q-value" of languages. The Q-value provides a comparative yardstick to distinguish between rising and declining languages by identifying, first, the proportion of total speakers of a language in the global language constellation, and second, the proportion of multilingual speakers who speak that language out of all multilingual speakers in the constellation. A language with a greater Q-value by each measurement will tend to be favored by people because it provides them with greater communication advantages. It follows...