A Human Rights Perspective on Language Ecology
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TOVE SKUTNABB-KANGAS AND R O B E RT P H I L L I P S O N
A HUMAN RIGHTS PERSPECTIVE ON LANGUAGE ECOLOGY
INTRODUCTION
In the language of ecology, the strongest ecosystems are those that are the most diverse. Diversity is directly related to stability; variety is important for long-term survival. Our success on this planet has been due to an ability to adapt to different kinds of environment over thousands of years. Such ability is born out of diversity. Thus language and cultural diversity maximises chances of human success and adaptability (Baker, 2001, p. 281). Language rights are an existential issue for the political and cultural survival of individuals and communities worldwide, ranging from large minorities/peoples such as the 25–40 million Kurds in several countries in the Middle East or the 8 million Uyghurs in China, to the 70 million users of probably thousands of Sign languages worldwide, and small indigenous peoples such as Ánar Saami in Finland (fewer than 300 speakers). Language rights are a current research concern of social theorists, international and constitutional lawyers, political scientists, sociolinguists, educationists, and many others. Understandings of language/linguistic ecology range widely. Many researchers use ‘ecology’ as a reference to ‘context’ or ‘language environment’, to describe language-related issues embedded in (micro or macro) sociolinguistic, economic and political settings rather than de-contextualised. Others have more specific definitions and subcategories (e.g. articles in Fill and Mühlhäusler, 2001; Mufwene, 2001; Mühlhäusler, 1996, 2003). The topic should be of major concern to humanity. Only some few hundred of the world’s around 7,000 spoken languages and a few dozen sign languages are learned in education systems even as subjects, let alone used as teaching languages. Schools have played and continue to play a major role in annihilating languages and identities (see Magga, Nicolaisen, Trask, Dunbar and Skutnabb-Kangas, 2004; articles in McCarty, 2005). Optimistic linguists estimate that half of today’s spoken languages may be extinct or seriously endangered by the end of the present century (see http://www.unesco.org/endangeredlanguages, or A. Creese, P. Martin and N. H. Hornberger (eds), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2nd Edition, Volume 9: Ecology of Language, 3–13. #2008 Springer Science+Business Media LLC.
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T. S K U T N A B B - K A N G A S A N D R . P H I L L I P S O N
UNESCO’s position paper Education in a Multilingual World http:// unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001297/129728e.pdf); pessimistic but fully realistic estimates place 90–95% of the world’s languages in this category (Krauss, 1998). UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage Unit’s Ad Hoc Expert Group on Endangered Languages uses this more pessimistic figure in their report, Language Vitality and Endangerment (http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/file_download.php/ 1a41d53cf46e10710298d314450b97dfLanguageþVitality.doc). It is because general human rights formulations are not explicit or proac
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