scholarly journals Maxi-Min Language Use A Critical Remark on a Concept by Philippe van Parijs

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-70
Author(s):  
Jan Kruse
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Language Choice ◽  
Common Language ◽  
Critical Remark ◽  
Normative Concept ◽  
Linguistic Justice ◽  
The World

Abstract Philippe van Parijs explains in Linguistic Justice for Europe and for the World the concept of maxi-min language use as a process of language choice. He suggests that the language chosen as a common language should maximize the minimal competence of a community. Within a multilingual group of people, the chosen language is the language known best by a participant who knows it least. For obvious reasons, only English would qualify for having that status. This article argues that maxi-min is rather a normative concept, not only because the process itself remains empirically unfounded. Moreover, language choice is the result of complex social and psychological structures. As a descriptive process, the maxi-min choice happens in the reality fairly seldom, whereas the max-min use of languages seen as a normative process could be a very effective tool to measure linguistic justice.

scholarly journals Current Perspectives on the Influence of Setting and Audience on Language Choices in Multilingual Cameroon

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 362-369
Author(s):  
Colvis Niba Ngwa
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Language Choice ◽  
Language Choices ◽  
The World ◽  
The City

Cameroon is a dense multilingual setting in which many languages co-exist. Most of these languages are learned and are readily available for use by Cameroonians. This study probed into the complex notion of language use in a bid to ascertain in what ways context and audience influence language choice in a dense multilingual context like Cameroon. The analysis of data obtained from 100 informants in the city of Yaounde revealed that setting and audience significantly influence the language choice of a speaker and that the choice of a language reveals certain aspects of a speaker’s character, attitudes and perception of the world around them.  

scholarly journals Regionality – Language – Internet

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 35-47
Author(s):  
Mária Pásztor-Kicsi
Keyword(s):  
Strong Influence ◽  
Language Use ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Common Language ◽  
Speech And Language ◽  
Global Village ◽  
Regional Features ◽  
The World ◽  
Regional Cultures

Abstract The Internet has a strong influence on our daily communication and language use. Its continuous growing makes us face the world characterized by networks of connections that span multi-continental distances. The metaphor of global village seems to be not merely a futuristic theory, but pure reality. People can communicate worldwide with each other, reach all kinds of information to get up-to-date, as long as they respect the basic demand of globalization, which means the use of a common language (i.e. English). But this tendency hides a serious issue if we try to observe globalization from the aspect of local and regional cultures and languages, especially those in minority position. The study deals with the language use of the Hungarian minority in Vojvodina, with special focus on Netspeak and the regional features of language forms used on the Internet. It also analyses the attitudes of a group of students towards the influence of the Internet on speech and language. This part of the survey is based on questionnaires.

scholarly journals Linguistic Justice and English as a Lingua Franca from a Minority Perspective

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zsombor Csata
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Optimal Solution ◽  
Regulatory Environment ◽  
Minority Languages ◽  
Linguistic Minorities ◽  
Lingua Franca ◽  
Linguistic Justice ◽  
The World ◽  
Official Languages ◽  
Interethnic Communication

Abstract The article is a brief evaluation of the regulatory environment of language use in Transylvania, Romania based on Van Parijs’ conceptual toolkit presented in his 2011 book Linguistic Justice for Europe and for the World. This linguistic regime is a coercive hybrid regulation containing elements stemming from both the categorical regime (personality principle) and territoriality. In municipalities or counties where the official use of minority languages is permitted, it is typically present in a conjunctive manner, but its enforcement is weak and inconsistent. The principle of territorially coercive linguistic subdivision – proposed by Van Parijs as an optimal solution for a greater linguistic justice – is not accommodated in any of the fields of official communication and under present political circumstances it has no further plausibility. A hypothetical alternative for the territorially coercive regime would be the introduction of English as a lingua franca in interethnic communication. We argued that this latter option would be fair only if English could entirely replace the official languages currently in use or it would receive a fully equivalent status at least in those regions where a considerable number of linguistic minorities live.

Philippe van Parijs | “EN EL SIGLO XLV SE PREGUNTARÁN QUÉ HICIMOS EN ESTE PERÍODO”

1969 ◽  
pp. 76-81
Author(s):  
L. E. Misseri
Keyword(s):  
Linguistic Justice ◽  
The World

PHILIPPE VAN PARIJS es Profesor de la Cátedra de Ética económica y social de laUniversidad Católica de Lovaina, en el campus de Louvain-la-Neuve. Es un exponentedel marxismo analítico, defensor de la idea de un ingreso básico universal y un filósofocomprometido también con problemas de justicia lingüística e intergeneracional. VanParijs es autor de: Qu'est-ce qu'une société juste ? [¿Qué es una sociedad justa?](1991), Marxism Recycled [Marxismo reciclado] (1993), Real Freedom for All[Libertad real para todos] (1995), L'Allocation universelle [El ingreso universal] (conYannick Vanderborght, 2005), Linguistic Justice for Europe and for the World[Justicia lingüística para Europa y el mundo] (2011), entre otros.

Matthew Arnold and the Institutional Imagination of Liberalism

2021 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 361-375
Author(s):  
Sebastian Lecourt
Keyword(s):  
Close Reading ◽  
Common Language ◽  
Matthew Arnold ◽  
Main Claim ◽  
Great Books ◽  
Shared Identity ◽  
The World ◽  
Class Divisions ◽  
Literary Canons

I first took up Matthew Arnold's essays as a dissertation writer circa 2008. Although I had not read much of Arnold's prose beyond the commonly anthologized pieces (“The Function of Criticism at the Present Time,” “The Study of Poetry,” bits of Culture and Anarchy), he was a figure very much out of favor, and I brought to the table a strong preconception of his polemic. Arnold, I had learned, was a kind of cultural nationalist trying to fight class divisions within Britain by prescribing a narrow canon of books that could shore up a common language for his compatriots. His main claim was that there was a singular tradition of great books called “culture” that embodied “the best that is known and thought in the world.” Everyone in Britain needed to keep reading these books if the nation were to retain a shared identity and not fall into chaos. Furthermore, as I understood it, Arnold thought that to experience culture you needed to remain “disinterested” and “aloof from what is called ‘the practical view of things’” (5:252). Arnold was a Victorian Mortimer Adler who sought to defend the authority of traditional literary canons as well as a Victorian Wimsatt-and-Beardsley who upheld disinterested close reading against hyperpolitical Theory.

Nacionālā valoda zinātnē: Latvijas piemērs

2020 ◽  
pp. 31-52
Author(s):  
Agnese Dubova ◽  
Diāna Laiveniece ◽  
Egita Proveja ◽  
Baiba Egle
Keyword(s):  
Online Community ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Language Choice ◽  
Doctoral Dissertation ◽  
National Language ◽  
Main Trend ◽  
Scientific Language ◽  
Lingua Franca ◽  
Scientific Excellence ◽  
Language Of Science

The aim of the paper is to show and describe the current situation in the Latvian scientific language based on a case study of the problem about the place of a national language and its existence in science in modern globalised time, when the dominance of English as the lingua franca of science grows. More specifically, the paper analyses the November 2019 conceptual plans of the Latvian Ministry of Education and Science about a new concept of doctoral study programmes that would lean towards using English as the doctoral dissertation language in hopes for scientific excellence, and the public reaction and opinion on this concept. The descriptive method is used within the paper, including the contemporary literature review focused on the language of science globally, issues of multilingualism and glocalization, and the problems caused by these issues. Via empirical discourse content analysis, the authors looked at various documents, including Latvian law that governs the rights and rules of the Latvian language use in various contexts. They examined a wide array of mainly online content and diverse online community discourse related to the question of what language should be used (Latvian or English) within the doctoral dissertation process. For a comparison of the situation, the paper also provides a brief insight into the regulation of the language used in the development of dissertations in Lithuania. During the study, 21 different sources, that is, articles posted on various Latvian news media sites and 304 online user comments, predominantly anonymous, under these articles relating to the issue of language choice in doctoral dissertations were analysed. All the mentioned sources, to a greater or lesser extent, discussed the issue of what place Latvian has as a language of science and whether English should be the dominant language in doctoral studies, what implications the choice and usage of a language could have, and what far-reaching impact this might have on science, education, and society. The material revealed a breadth of opinions, depending on what group a person is more likely to represent, ranging from the Ministry stance to organisations and the general public. Some had a very pro-English stance, and some showed significant concern for the Latvian language. The main trend in online community user opinions could be condensed as such: there is a variety of language choices for a doctoral dissertation – a dissertation written in Latvian; a dissertation written in English; or leaving the language choice up to the doctoral student. This would ensure that the language choice fits the doctoral students’ goals and field of research. Making English mandatory would not likely lead to guarantee scientific excellence as what matters is the research content itself, not the language used. The national language in science is a current and important issue in Latvia, as there is a need for state language use in a scientific register, and this usage should be developed further. The Ministry document discussed is still a draft report, and it is not yet known what final decisions on the PhD process and dissertation language will be taken by policymakers in the future. This paper shows that language choice and use in science is not just a matter for scholars and PhD candidates, but an issue that can and does gain interest from various groups of society and gets discussed online in multiple ways, allowing people to express their opinion on policy and societal issues. Latvian is a scientific language, and it has a place within the international scientific discourse, and it should not be made to step aside for the dominant lingua franca.

A case-study in historical sociolinguistics beyond Europe: Reconstructing patterns of multilingualism in a linguistic community in Siberia

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-251
Author(s):  
Olesya Khanina ◽  
Miriam Meyerhoff
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Life Stories ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Language Choice ◽  
Linguistic Community ◽  
Oral Histories ◽  
Northern Siberia ◽  
Historical Sociolinguistics

AbstractA collection of traditional and ‘old life’ stories recorded in the late 1940s is used to reconstruct the sociolinguistic situation of the Enets community in Northern Siberia from the 1850s until the 1930s. The Enets had regular contacts with a number of neighbouring indigenous peoples (Nganasans, Tundra Nenets, Selkups, Evenkis, Dolgans) and later with Russian newcomers. The oral histories often comment on language use, and as a result we can reconstruct not only the languages that the Enets people used in this period, but also the contexts in which they used them. The Enets community’s multilingualism was typically characterized by command of key neighbouring languages, with the occasional command of other more (geographically and socially) remote ones. With close neighbours, language choice seems to have had limited social load, while in cases of trade or agonistic contact, the choice of language in interethnic communication seems to have followed a principle of asymmetric convergence towards the language of the party with the greatest contextual social power. The analysis is founded on a database of dozens of communicative events mentioned in the oral stories (over 50 are analyzed). Ongoing fieldwork on the modern sociolinguistic situation suggests that until quite recently there was considerable stability in the sociolinguistic norms governing multilingual interaction among the Enets.

scholarly journals Intricate Coalescence of Nature and Philosophy in Coelho’s world: Ruminations from The Alchemist

2020 ◽  
pp. 72-79
Author(s):  
L. Monica Lilly
Keyword(s):  
Common Language ◽  
Human Species ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common ◽  
Human Psyche ◽  
Egyptian Desert ◽  
The Universe

 In The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho projects Santiago communicating with Nature which he refers to as the common language of the world. A study of The Alchemist will reveal how Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a bounty treasure explores the wisdom of life. His quest for the treasure buried near the Pyramids propels him to enter an unchartered territory from his homeland in Spain to the Egyptian desert. This paper aims to explore the ecological reflections mired with concepts of slants in philosophy. Ecology on one hand is considered as a branch of science but, despite providing erudition on the subject it is understood that it provides sagacity to understand the universe better. This paper rightly discusses the amalgamation of nature and literature. It is indeed a manifestation of the recurrently believed ideologies that connect human psyche and platitudes of the cosmos. The logos that interrelates the existing connection between the non human and the human species require an exceptional mastery. This paper will analyze and depict the emotions connected with nature from the spectacle of the Protagonist Santiago in The Alchemist.

scholarly journals Alethic Deflationism and Normativity: A Critique

2018 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 292
Author(s):  
Massimo Dell'Utri
Keyword(s):  
Final Analysis ◽  
Normative Concept ◽  
Paul Horwich ◽  
The World ◽  
Conceptual Resources ◽  
The Way

The paper starts by highlighting that virtually nobody would object to claims such as “to regard an assertion or a belief or a thought as true or false is to regard it as being right or wrong”—a claim that shows that truth is intrinsically normative. It is well known that alethic deflationists deny this. Paul Horwich, for instance, maintains that nothing shows that TRUTH is a normative concept in the way that OUGHT is. By relying on a distinction among dimensions of normativity I will try to pinpoint the weakness of Horwich’s argument in the fact that he works with a strong, uncalled-for, interpretation of normativity, whereas a weaker interpretation is more than enough. However, the impression might persist that a different understanding of the normativity of truth on the part of deflationists could eventually show the compatibility between alethic deflationism and normativity. The remaining part of the paper is devoted to contend that this is a wrong impression. Accordingly, it is stated that the normativity exerted by truth is ascribable in the final analysis to the world, and the provocative claim is defended that alethic deflationism lacks the conceptual resources to account for the relation between language and the world.***Deflacionismo Alético e Normatividade: Uma Crítica***O artigo começa destacando que praticamente ninguém se opõe a reivindicações como "considerar uma afirmação, uma crença ou um pensamento como verdadeiro ou falso é considerá-lo como correto ou errado" - uma afirmação que mostra que a verdade é intrinsecamente normativa. Sabe-se que os deflacionistas aléticos negam isso. Paul Horwich, por exemplo, sustenta que nada mostra que a verdade é um conceito normativo da maneira que deveria ser. Ao confiar em uma distinção entre as dimensões da normatividade, tentarei identificar a fraqueza do argumento de Horwich no fato de que ele trabalha com uma interpretação de normatividade forte, desnecessária, quando uma interpretação mais fraca seria mais do que suficiente. No entanto, a impressão pode persistir de que uma compreensão diferente da normatividade da verdade por parte dos deflacionistas poderia eventualmente mostrar a compatibilidade entre o deflacionismo e a normatividade alética. A parte restante do artigo dedica-se a afirmar que esta é uma impressão errada. Por conseguinte, afirma-se que a normatividade exercida pela verdade é imputável, em última análise, ao mundo, e a reivindicação provocativa é defendida de que o deflacionismo alético não possui os recursos conceituais para explicar a relação entre a linguagem e o mundo.

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