LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY

• 3 DIMENSIONS OF DIVESRSITY:• 1. RICHNESS• 2. EVENNES• 3. DISTANCE

richness

• A B

m

n

l

x z

y

vu

• A B

m

n

lc c

c

cc

• Diversity is not only a matter of richness – number of types – but also of evenness - how equally population is spread, between those types

Diversity increases, evenness declines

• Individual with a distinct native language

1

distance

m1m2 m3

mparrot croc

odile

• The intersection of the 3 dimensions – • number of types, • spread among types, • distance between types – • enable us to say that diversity is increasing or

decreasing in a particular population

• Human beings, however, are endowed with the capacity to become competent in several languages. This makes room for a more distinctive and often more relevant notion of linguistic distance

two unilingual communities A and B

• A B

AB

• Take the case of a population consisting initially of two unilingual communities A and B, and suppose that half of B learns the language of A - this learning generates a new mixed type AB and diversity would rise. But we can also say that the diversity has been reduced: by being turned into ABs, some of the As have come linguistically much closer to the Bs and have thereby reduced the average distance between the linguistic repertoires of the population. The more languages two people have in common, and the better they know the languages, the smaller the linguistic distance between them – the smaller the distance, the less diverse the population.

Lingua franca

• Definition: • is a way of referring to communication in English

between speakers who have different first languages• can include native English speakers, but in most

cases, it is a contact language between people who share neither a common native tongue nor a common national culture, and for whom English is an additional language

• Reduces linguistic diversity – takes richness and evenness into account

There are two trends in Europe today:

• Spreading the competence in English• The growth of the proportion of linguistic

interaction occurring between people with different mother tongues

• The outcome of the combination of these two trends is an increase in the proportion of conversations held in English

• As people add competence in English to competence in their native language and interact with people who lack the latter competence, they substitute English for their mother tongue in a growing share of their conversations

• Ex : in Netherlands and India, many have achieved such a high level of competence in the lingua franca, that they find it easier to express themselves on some subjects in that language even with people sharing their native tongue.

Types of diversity:• Local diversity – refers to diversity within a local unit• Territorial diversity – to refer to diversity across local units• In case of ethnic, cultural or linguistic diversity this

distinction is useful to contrast, on the one hand the local diversity that exists (in a town as a result of recent immigration, but also as a result of ancient immigration, with distinctness perpetuated by religious differences as in the Jewish ghettos of medieval cities), with , on the other hand, the territorial diversity that exists between different geographical areas of a particular country such as Switzerland or Nigeria, typically as a result of its incorporating territories in different languages that have been cohabiting “forever”.