Introduction

WAYNE HARBERT, SALLY MCCONNELL-GINET, AMANDA MILLER and JOHN WHITMAN

This volume explores aspects of the relationships between language and poverty, singling out two central questions from the complex interconnections in that domain and examining them from the perspectives of linguistics, economics, anthropology, sociology, and language policy and planning.

On the one hand, it addresses the question of how poverty affects language survival. In contexts of competition between languages, shift to the dominant language and abandonment of the minority language are most often determined by factors that are broadly economic. These may include perceived economic advantages for oneself or one's children in switching to the dominant language or changes in local economies which result in the destabilization or dissolution of minority language communities. Language maintenance efforts, too, depend on financial resources for such things as teacher training and employment, materials development and technological support. Government and other funding agencies, even when favorably disposed toward minority languages, are often confronted with difficult questions of priority. How are efforts to maintain indigenous languages to be valued relative to other societal needs such as public education, health, sustainable utilization of resources and economy building? Are these either/or choices or is it possible to promote minority languages indirectly by steering resources toward the economic needs of the communities in which those languages are used? To what extent do indigenous languages count as a part of the wealth of the communities in which they are spoken? Is it possible to assign a value to cultural assets such as indigenous languages and to the cultural impoverishment attendant on their loss? How do – or can – such languages factor into the material economies of the language community?

On the other hand, it examines the role of language in determining the economic status of speakers. Speaking certain languages, or not speaking certain others, often leads to poverty by affecting individuals' access to jobs and education, as well as their ability to participate on an equal footing in the functions of the society. Issues involved here include discrimination in employment based on language, accommodation or nonaccommodation of minority languages in education and public services (such as, e.g. ballots, licensing examinations and the dissemination of information), the question of official languages, and the subsidizing of efforts by minority language speakers to acquire the dominant language.

Questions involving the relationships between language and economics are of practical concern to people in a wide range of disciplines and professions, including politicians, educators, social workers, language planners and others in all situations in which more than a single language is used. The issues encompassed by both of our themes have grown in significance in an era of increasing globalization and accelerating change in economies, technologies, and social, cultural and political traditions. These developments in turn impose a growing obligation on the academic disciplines at whose intersections these questions lie and which should be prepared to offer advice, guidance and advocacy to those responsible for planning and policy. These questions are also increasingly of direct concern to linguists and other field researchers who work with minority languages and minority language communities. Fieldworkers in communities whose languages are highly endangered are often the only individuals, aside from community members themselves, who are aware of the existence, the richness and the imperilment of those languages. Their experience and training, as well as their presence in the community, position them to serve not only as advisors and advocates for the community and its language to the outside world, but as resources within the community who can help shape its response to language endangerment. Beyond this, however, by the nature of their professional activity, fieldworkers become a part of the economies of the languages they study. Increased awareness of the significance of this role has led to ongoing reassessment of the implications, obligations and practical questions it raises.

This volume attempts to explore some aspects of the relationships between language and poverty, in both their scholarly and practical aspects, from a cross-disciplinary perspective appropriate to their scope. It is organized into four sections. The first contains chapters by Herman Batibo (Chapter 2) and Matthias Brenzinger (Chapter 3), addressing the role of poverty as a factor in language maintenance and language death. These chapters make specific reference to the situation in Africa, where linguistic density is particularly high (with approximately one third of the world's languages) and where poverty, with its attendant threats to continued linguistic diversity, is particularly acute (though, as Brenzinger notes, poverty and linguistic diversity do not necessarily co-occur in individual countries). The second section addresses the ways in which access by individuals to resources in multilingual contexts is affected by the languages they do or do not speak. Such effects manifest themselves in a variety of different ways. In nations with a colonial history, for example, the language of former colonizers often continues to exist in a complex relationship with indigenous languages, and the opportunities for advancement in such contexts often depend on the mastery of languages that are native to a...