the universality of English

last fall, the linguist and sometimes cultural critic John McWhorter wrote a World Affairs article dealing with the impending demise of most of the world’s languages and the future of a universal English.  he sets the scene:

Linguistic death is proceeding more rapidly even than species attrition. According to one estimate, a hundred years from now the 6,000 languages in use today will likely dwindle to 600. The question, though, is whether this is a problem.

many people, including McWhorter, are incredibly saddened by this loss.  and at seems that too often we read about how the last speaker of a particular language has died off, such as what happened this past February with Bo in India.  unlike some others, however, he feels that we will be unable to stem the tide.  a chief reason for this is globalization and cosmopolitanism.  here, he provides a summary of “language death” as it affects immigrants, especially immigrants to larger cities:

As people speaking indigenous languages migrate to cities, inevitably they learn globally dominant languages like English and use them in their interactions with one another. The immigrants’ children may use their parents’ indigenous languages at home. But they never know those languages as part of their public life, and will therefore be more comfortable with the official language of the world they grow up in. For the most part, they will speak this language to their own children. These children will not know the indigenous languages of their grandparents, and thus pretty soon they will not be spoken. This is language death.

McWhorter directly challenges the idea, popular among many, that if a language dies, a culture necessarily dies with it.  as he sees it, language only has to do with geographical separation, and nothing to do with culture.  the emergence of the innumerable languages over human history — most lost, many of which we’ll never know, by the way — is due to “chance linguistic driftings.”  by way of comparison, when we speak of protecting or saving whales, we don’t speak of each family of whales, each with its unique song, but rather of whales generally.

he also denies any genuine (or at least substantial) link between a specific language and the specific culture that produces it.

For the better part of a century, all attempts to conjure any meaningful indication of thought patterns or cultural outlook from the vocabularies and grammars of languages has fallen apart in that sort of way, with researchers picking up only a few isolated shards of evidence. For example, because “table” has feminine gender in Spanish (la mesa), a Spanish speaker is more likely—if pressed—to imagine a cartoon table having a high voice. But this isn’t exactly what most of us would think of as meaningfully “cultural,” nor as having to do with “thought.” And in fact, Spanish speakers do not go about routinely imagining tables as cooing in feminine tones.

in short, claiming that when language dies, culture dies with it amounts to putting the cart before the horse:

The main loss when a language dies is not cultural but aesthetic. The click sounds in certain African languages are magnificent to hear. In many Amazonian languages, when you say something you have to specify, with a suffix, where you got the information. The Ket language of Siberia is so awesomely irregular as to seem a work of art.

aside from this aesthetic factor, however, he returns to his initial question: is there some urgent benefit to humanity that some people speak one language while others speak another?  is it essential to humanity that (beyond the genuine aesthetic loss) that we employ the full range of our phonetic capabilities — which no individual language does, of course — or that some languages preserve case systems?  he thinks not.  (it is a shame, I should add, when languages move from precision of speech to more imprecision and confusion — a linguistic dulling, if you will.)

McWhorter imagines a future where everyone speaks primarily English — the de facto universal language, as he sees it — along with about 600 additional languages (the overall count, not the number spoken by each individual, of course!) worldwide.  he insists that the unfortunate — but unalterable — history of colonialism associated with English should not prevent us from acknowledging this fact.

To change this situation would require a great many centuries, certainly too long a span to figure meaningfully in our assessment of the place of English in world communications in our present moment.

in addition to the present position of English worldwide, he argues that a few of its features will guarantee its success, contrasting English’s “user-friendliness” with, say, the 2,000 Chinese characters you need to learn even to read a newspaper, or some of the more rare phonetic features of certain languages

For all of its association with Pepsi and the CIA, English is very user-friendly as the world’s 6,000 languages go. English verb conjugation is spare compared to, say, that of Italian—just the third-person singular s in the present, for example. There are no pesky genders to memorize (and no feminine-gendered tables that talk like Penelope Cruz). There are no sounds under whose dispensation you almost have to be born as a prerequisite for rendering them anywhere near properly, like the notorious trilly rˇ sound in Czech.

in the long run, he does not think it’s realistic that English will eventually swallow up all the others as well, especially in countries where a sole (non-English) language dominates and is tied up with the entire culture (e.g., Japanese); however, unforeseen events such as rapid and dramatic climate change might require more global migration, necessitating the use of English as a common language among immigrants.

he sums up:

At the end of the day, language death is, ironically, a symptom of people coming together. Globalization means hitherto isolated peoples migrating and sharing space. For them to do so and still maintain distinct languages across generations happens only amidst unusually tenacious self-isolation—such as that of the Amish—or brutal segregation…The alternative, it would seem, is indigenous groups left to live in isolation—complete with the maltreatment of women and lack of access to modern medicine and technology typical of such societies. Few could countenance this as morally justified, and attempts to find some happy medium in such cases are frustrated by the simple fact that such peoples, upon exposure to the West, tend to seek membership in it.

overall, he’s probably right about the continued loss of languages worldwide, although there are a number of reasons why English might not be the go-to second language for everyone on the planet in the future.  but what’s missing most from this article is consideration of the extent to which hybrid languages and creoles will emerge around the world as minor languages blend into the larger ones, or even as larger ones merge with one another.  so, for instance, Hinglish and Spanglish may be forces to be reckoned with.  how might this sort of interaction affect English globally?  is it possible that we may have various Englishes emerging in different locations?  could we eventually see even more integration between those 500-600 languages that survive the massacre?  what might a global language (or a handful of global languages) look and sound like?

scientific truth in the age of Wikipedia

in February of last year, Seed magazine ran a brief article addressing the question of (concern about) scientific truth in the age of Wikipedia — that is, whether “the radical egalitarianism of the wiki undermine notions of scientific authority and consensus.”  obviously, as is pointed out, group consensus is not always the best way to arrive at objective truth.  some are concerned (indeed, outright frantic) over the extent to which this bottoms-up approach will undermine those hard-won facts of, say, scientific or historical research.

but the author of this article (T.J. Kelleher) argues that these fears are mostly unfounded, as “[i]t is not scientific rigor that is accommodating the wiki, but the wiki that is accommodating science.”  just think of areas of knowledge where no control test is possible (e.g., in historical research, where we are limited to the accident of history and the chances of discovery) or practical (e.g., large-scale scientific hypotheses about populations or, as the author proffers, the human impact on global warming).  here, consensus is often based on the best available knowledge and the most rigorous forms of analysis; often it comes down to what hypothesis best accounts for all of the data — and for this, consensus is key.

further, Clay Shirky — author of a book I’d like to read — argues that notions of authority and expertise are only “social facts,” and that works (and their writers) are considered authoritative only because everybody agrees that this is so.  and to be honest, when venturing into an area of knowledge with which I am not familiar, I will often reach out to recognizable landmarks and sources that I deem — from experience elsewhere and ongoing critique — to be authoritative (e.g., a particular author, a publisher, a university or institution affiliation, etc.).

when it comes to the scientific process, some believe that a source like Wikipedia will actually prove useful in its ability “to act as a chronicler and creator of repositories for science, to create a home for what we haven’t proved to be false and for what we think to be true.”  in other words, wikis can be beneficial to the notion of falsifiability — a key step in the scientific process.  thus bad ideas can easily set aside, and good ones can be continually refined, since the business of science, as some would argue, is more often than not establishing what is false, not necessarily what is true in some unchangeable sense.  to this end, as an MIT professor puts it, “the wiki model is ‘reasonably good’ at discerning, if not what is true, then what is false.”

one problem that remains, however, is the anonymity of the contribution and editing process.  not only is this a problem for managing the content of the site (are the contributors even qualified?), but it may also undermine the processes whereby we uphold notions of authority, “social fact” though it may be.  when someone stumbles across differing opinions or is left with an ambiguous answer to a query, how does that person go about seeking a more authoritative take on the problem?  if we cannot all become experts in the various fields of knowledge in which we might dabble — or into which we must wade (e.g., when seeking emergency medical information) — how do we learn where to invest that “capital” when it matters if knowledge production or maintenance is done anonymously?  you might feel slightly better about taking someone’s advice if they have widely acknowledge credentials and if their professional career depends on them being right.

some scientific organizations have sought to counter this problem by creating rival “wikis” that remove the veil of anonymity and involve an application and approval process that restricts an individual’s contribution to their certified field of knowledge.  and even here, the process of peer-review and consensus continues to play an important role.

personally, I don’t think that Wikipedia should be much of a threat to the scientific process or to fields of knowledge, provided that there is an understanding of where Wikipedia’s value lies.  if individuals turn to wikis for answers to every problem or as the end-all source of knowledge, unaware of how to go about verifying that knowledge and where to go for more in-depth understandings, I don’t blame Wikipedia — I’d blame any academic system that has failed to demonstrate how research is conducted.  many people in this country or woefully ignorant of the basic scientific process, not to mention principles of, say, historiography, but I don’t think that this is a new problem resulting from the development of more egalitarian forms of knowledge maintenance such as wikis.

also, I think that Wikipedia is a fairly reliable source — introductory source, that is — for many of the bodies of knowledge I’ve stumbled across.  and I am pretty sure that the rules have changed so that not just anyone, at any time, can make whatever change he or she would like with little to not policing.  so far I think that there has been substantial — and satisfactory — sifting to ensure fairly reliable information — often superior to (and far more practical than) traditional storehouses of knowledge such as encyclopedias.

article review: “The Age of Mass Intelligence”

a few weeks back, I reviewed Susan Jacoby’s brief article titled “The Dumbing of America.”  it’s hard to argue with some of her points regarding the apparent mindlessness of much of mass culture.  after all, Glenn Beck has not one but several best-selling books in stores and online.  god help us.  however, as I noted then, I’d want to see figures and numbers regarding rates of literacy and book consumption, among other things.  some of that is presented in the article under review by John Parker, but this time to make the opposite case, namely, that intelligence is not decreasing but increasing.  or rather, that interest in “intelligence things,” those things typically associated with the higher culture supposedly gasping for air, is on the increase.

one of the first things Parker cites are increasing rates of museum attendance in several Western countries.  numbers have been rising steadily in the last decade, partly due to renewed efforts to reach out to new audiences (along with the fact that museums are now free in England — though not special exhibits, which are also on the increase), but also due, he argues, to a vigorous interest in culture and in learning.  in a similar vein, surveys conducted at a British book festival revealed people from all sorts of backgrounds and professions.

another significant area to consider — as Jacoby has — is book sales.  “One of the commonest complaints by cultural doomsayers,” he says, “is that nobody reads good books any more.”  as already mentioned, the top sellers on, say, Amazon.com usually leave much to be desired in the way of intelligence.  do we really have anything to learn from Glenn Beck?  Steven Harvey?  does Dan Brown’s blunt writing really do much for our literary sensitivities?  (not that we can’t be entertained, of course.) why are diet books always doing so well, while we keep getting bigger and more preventable-disease-ridden — nutrition isn’t actually that hard to figure out!

despite this, however, Parker points out, among other things, Oprah’s book club, which as recommended a number of really great modern books, along with some classics like Tolstoy and Faulkner.  the ensuing sales were substantial.  similarly, a bookstore in London asked some modern writers to set up tables of recommended books, many not the easiest to read, and sales jumped by over 1,000% for those authors.

although the majority of the population may not be aware of the major literary awards in their country, not to mention those of other countries, there are still major audiences awaiting the announcement each year of the nominees for the National Book Award, the Pulitzer, the Man Booker Prize (in England), and the Prix Goncourt (in France), among many others.  literary festivals are also on the rise.  (on a frustrated note, Boston had one a week or two ago, which would have been awesome to attend if we were still living there…)

what about other forms of entertainment?  take TV, for instance.  while there is “no shortage,” as Parker puts it, “of chewing gum for the eyes,” there are also a number of really smart shows out there — in terms of dialogue, plot, or overall writing — with impressive ratings.  but then again, it’s sort of hard to overlook the endless lineup of reality-show trash with perhaps even more staggering numbers.  the same can be said for podcasts: while there are certainly some stimulating examples, the overwhelming majority is fluff or worse.  if nothing else, a case could be made that intelligence isn’t dying or that we aren’t all dumbing down, regardless of what we end up saying about to what extent mass culture remains dumb.

but Parker is making the case for “mass intelligence,” not just a pocket of elites.  he next moves on to figures for classical music, specially for Classic FM, which are impressively on the rise.  however, to what extent are audiences really versed in this genre (is that the right word?) of music?  there are any number of “intro do” and “for dummies” books on this and a number of other topics.  how familiar with the canons of classical music or, say, literature must audiences be before we label them intelligent — or better, cultured — or not?  (and is this really a marker of “culture” and intelligence anyway?)

essentially, the case Parker is making with this is that an interest in things traditionally associated with “culture” in the West — things bemoaned by many as on a steady decline — is actually steadily on the rise.

a final area under review is higher education, which, obviously, has been on the rise throughout developed countries.  he first points to this (somewhat feebly) as positive evidence in his argument, but then he moves on to examination the extent to which this rising standard of higher education has contributed to the increased interest in things like museums, music, and other traditional culture indicators.

education is tricky, as much of the demand for more degrees is due to economic reasons, and there’s a case to be made (and plenty of people to make it) that the standards are being lowered with educational spread.  but this gets into debates about educational standards and curricula, none of which is covered here (and which I’ll save for another day, maybe).

as a final thought, I think it’s worth admitting how difficult this issue is.  what standards do we hold up for measure culture and intelligence?  the traditional Western canon?  if so, why?  there’s much to be praised about that canon, of course, but there is so much more.  I hope that there aren’t too many people who would make the claim that literature from other cultures, and especially literature from minority cultures working under the radar at a given time, doesn’t have any place in this picture (and whatever people there are, I don’t really want to know them).  African American writers and musicians are as essential to an appreciation of American culture as an Enlightenment thinker, as is the history of feminist writing in this country.  we need subversive and counter-cultural literature and music.

but all of this relates to the issue of what are the cultural “standards” by which we have a discussion about rising or lowering (non)intelligence levels.  if nothing else, Parker has added to the debate by offering a statistical look at some of those traditional areas that are often used as indicators of a decline in intelligence today.

next up: Jacoby takes on Tim de Lisle, the editor the magazine in which the present article appeared, in order to hash out some of these issues in a debate hosted on The Economist‘s website.

article review: “The Dumbing of America”

Susan Jacoby has started quite a few debates regarding the state of intellectualism in this country, one of which can be found over at The Economist, which I hope to review in the near future.  the article under review here, from The Washington Post, appeared last February.  it’s not terribly long, but somehow my summary and comments are … consider yourself warned.

Jacoby starts by commenting on the transformation of “elitist” into a pejorative term, one that those contending for political office exert incredible efforts to parry.  instead, candidates would give anything just to be seen as “folk,” an ordinary fella, just one of the gals.  “Such exaltations of ordinariness,” she writes, “are among the distinguishing traits of anti-intellectualism in any era.”

our level of dumbness is being defined by “a combination of heretofore irresistible forces,” including

• the triumph of video culture (including all digital media) over print culture
• a disjunction between the rising levels of formal education and our “shaky grasp” of basic geography, science, and history
• and a potent fusion of anti-rationalism with anti-intellectualism.

in support of this first point, along with the decline and feared end of print media, she cites statistics from the National Endowment for the Arts in support of the idea that reading rates are down.

In 1982, 82 percent of college graduates read novels or poems for pleasure; two decades later, only 67 percent did. And more than 40 percent of Americans under 44 did not read a single book — fiction or nonfiction — over the course of a year. The proportion of 17-year-olds who read nothing (unless required to do so for school) more than doubled between 1984 and 2004. This time period, of course, encompasses the rise of personal computers, Web surfing and video games.

Jacoby dismisses as “balderdash” the idea, advanced by some, that the zombie-like stares of gaping children before the TV are signs of focus rather than atrophy.  The real question,” she says, “is what toddlers are screening out, not what they are focusing on, while they sit mesmerized by videos they have seen dozens of times.”  (although a recent study about how internet searches improve brain activity in older persons may add an interesting dimension to this debate, though it has to do with first-time users.)

another indicator of decline is the inability to concentrate for long periods of time, along with the rapid rate at which people forget even recent news events.  people have no patience for consuming news, which — far from indicating an insatiable need for information — demonstrates our unwillingness to chew over anything meaty.  as a result, news channels and politicians have to get the point out as quick as possible, collapsing complex issues and stories to headlines and sound bites.  speaking of the latter, she writes,

Harvard University’s Kiku Adatto found that between 1968 and 1988, the average sound bite on the news for a presidential candidate — featuring the candidate’s own voice — dropped from 42.3 seconds to 9.8 seconds. By 2000, according to another Harvard study, the daily candidate bite was down to just 7.8 seconds.

a similar case can be made regarding our impatience with long articles (and my blog posts), as well.  (in fact, a case has been made, and reviewed by me here).  one fears what the future may hold as news agencies seek out their audiences on facebook or twitter.

skipping over her second point (which is supported by general thoughts and a survey about whether people find it necessary to know where other countries are or learn a foreign language — they largely don’t, btw), she moves to her final, more important point, which is

not lack of knowledge per se but arrogance about that lack of knowledge. The problem is not just the things we do not know (consider the one in five American adults who, according to the National Science Foundation, thinks the sun revolves around the Earth); it’s the alarming number of Americans who have smugly concluded that they do not need to know such things in the first place.

what’s far worse than our ignorance (not always a completely pejorative term, as most of us are quite ignorant about a lot of things, and that’s mostly OK) about, say, where other countries are located or about basic facts of history or science is the denial that such knowledge is even important in the first place.  and taking it a step further, you often find people who are militantly stupid.  (see photo at top.)

while I see the lack of attention span as a problem, certainly, this may not be the worst thing in the world, per se.  after all, who isn’t excited about not only the increased access to information available through electronic resources (along with the digitization of books) but also the ridiculous speeds at which we can get it?  plus, do we really need to read every sentence of the newspaper or an article, especially when what we’re after is the “core” of the argument or news and the writing may not be all that good?  (also, the founder of Wikipedia, understandably enthusiastic about global digital-based enterprises, weighed in briefly on this article here.)

what worries me more is our (in)ability to get to those “cores” of arguments.  in other words, an incapacity not only to identify the essential line of reasoning and evidence in a given argument, but also to sift through the endless amount of garbage out there in order to arrive at “the facts.”

not too long ago, in those dark, distressing days leading up the 2008 election, someone I know thoughtlessly recycled a piece of information regarding one of the candidates that had previously been debunked.  this person was incredulous that people could support that candidate for something the latter allegedly said, even enclosing the phrase it in quotation marks as if that settled the matter.  the problem, of course, is that this person actively retrieved (or passively received) this quote from an email, most likely, and not from any direct, credible source.  when the mistake was pointed out, in the form of various web sites explaining the misquote and how it didn’t appear where it was claimed to, this person seemed generally frustrated and confused about how one was supposed to know what’s what.

that’s terribly depressing.  in this case, it was a simple matter of looking for a supposed source for a quote and then checking the source — running to the library or the local bookstore.  or if nothing else, doing a few internet searches for arguments regarding the validity of something, such as a fact checker or — if you dare! — a site of someone making the opposite claim in order to compare arguments and try to sift out the golden nugget.

anyway, moving on: as for Jacoby’s claims about the alleged widespread disdain for fields of knowledge, this is surely troubling.  although I would need to see statistics regarding knowledge of certain facts overall, along with publishing statistics relating to the consumption of “pop science” books (even those books by reputable authors), which appears to be expanding, it is clear to see that there is a large contingency of “folk” in this country who not only could care less about learning some things, but also seem to be actively creating cultures that are opposed to genuine learning, such as modern science.  you only have to think of groups, religious or otherwise, who oppose the practice of medicine and rely on quackery for their well-being (which somehow manages to go wrong…).  this turns tragic when they implicate their children in this nonsense, in which case I fervently support government intervention.

even more frustrating are resurgences of creationism and intelligent design.  not that people who think evolution is a hoax should necessarily bear all the blame, as I myself was woefully ignorant at one point of what the theory of evolution actually stated, not to mention the wonderful amounts of evidence in clear support of it.  the real blame lies with those who continue to propagate this misinformation, either deliberately (as in they lie — and there plenty of demonstrable cases of this taking place) or ignorantly.  and in the case of the latter, there is room for blame, because they, as educators or shepherds, haven’t bothered to understand what they’re talking about.  if someone were to set up a hospital and treat people based on Galen’s texts, unconcerned with learning actual medicine, they should be duly punished (in this case, they couldn’t even bother since they need a license … so maybe you should have to have a license to teach anything regarding science?  you kind of do now, and most people speaking in churches around the country don’t have any qualifications, but somehow that doesn’t seem to matter…).

add to this (well, it’s not like they’re entirely unrelated…) the significant portion of this country that chokes down whatever is erupting from Glenn Beck’s fat head every night and you’ve got the recipe for a dum diddy dum dumbed down America.

now can we move, Emily, pleeeeeease?!?

article review: “Is Google Making Us Stoopid?”

in this thoughtful essay in the Atlantic, Nicholas Carr muses over the extent to which we may become (or already are) dumber as a result of the way we access information, and the accessibility of that information overall.

among his chief concerns are:

first, our ability to digest complex ideas or lengthy writing: the most comprehensive studies of internet search habits and the accessing of information online so far indicate that we skim and jump from topic to topic, rarely returning to our starting point.  in a particularly effective metaphor, he writes, “Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words.  Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.”

second, the impact of this kind of learning and thinking on our brains: as reading is not “natural” in the sense that speaking is, there is good reason to suspect that processing a lot more smaller pieces of information as opposed to digesting lengthy books or letting complex ideas simmer may produce a genuine difference.  plus there is the concern about how this type of accessing information affects how we interact in the world and with one another.

third, the concern that we will allow technology to do all the thinking for us, eventually leading to the point where we’d be drained of “inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance.”  reflecting on a comment made by one of Google’s founders, he writes,

Still, their easy assumption that we’d all “be better off” if our brains were supplemented, or even replaced, by an artificial intelligence is unsettling.  It suggests a belief that intelligence is the output of a mechanical process, a series of discrete steps that can be isolated, measured, and optimized.  In Google’s world, the world we enter when we go online, there’s little place for the fuzziness of contemplation.  Ambiguity is not an opening for insight but a bug to be fixed.  The human brain is just an outdated computer that needs a faster processor and a bigger hard drive.

there are a few responses and thoughts on the Edge web site, here.  I particularly like Larry Sanger’s brief dissent and apt phrase, “epistemic indigestion.”

W. Daniel Hillis writes that the problem is not Google but the flood of information (“a metaphor so trite,” he writes, “that we have ceased to question it”).  in this flood, Google is in fact a life preserver.  these days, so much more is expected of us in terms of current events, pop culture, etc. he sums up,

We evolved in a world where our survival depended on an intimate knowledge of our surroundings.  This is still true, but our surroundings have grown.  We are now trying to comprehend the global village with minds that were designed to handle a patch of savanna and a close circle of friends.  Our problem is not so much that we are stupider, but rather that the world is demanding that we become smarter.  Forced to be broad, we sacrifice depth.  We skim, we summarize, we skip to the fine print and, all too often, we miss the fine point.  We are drowning, but we do what we can to stay afloat.

I have to say that I think this relates more to those persons who make an effort to be informed and who, as learners, are struggling with the “flood” of information — and not necessarily the average person who can’t locate, say, Mexico on a map.  I mean, I’m still learning my states…

clearly, one of the most significant benefits of this change in how we access information is who gets to access it: everyone (well, not quite, but that’s where it’s headed).  with historical records, works, persons, and ideas within such close reach, it democratizes knowledge to a great extent and provides an unprecedented (and even previously unimaginable) possibility for information.  there is so much culturally and politically at stake when it comes to our history and that of others, so access to this information — albeit with the patience to actually digest it — is crucial.

the problem, of course, is whether or not we are able to digest any of that information, rather than simply scan or sample it.  this is the topic of the article. are we losing our patience and our ability to mull over lengthy writings and complex arguments?  are we all in danger of moving “from thoughts to puns, from rhetoric to telegram style”?  for me, this brings up the question of education and the goals of universities. do we teach and learn lists and big ideas, or do we learn how to access information and — and this is the kicker — think critically about that information.  we need to learn how to wade through the effluvium and find the core ideas, how to mull over ideas and take them apart, and how to relate previously disparate fields of knowledge in order to think and act reasonably in the world.

I should say, though, that my ability to read over longer periods of time and to reflect in ideas is, I feel (and hope), actually getting better.  I read more now and am increasingly interested in mulling things over and reflecting critically.  but then again, I also want to have a foot — maybe a toe? — in a much larger spread of ideas and fields of knowledge so as to at least have an idea about the “terrain” and how to go about navigating through it should I have the need.  and I want to at least be slightly informed when something is under discussion so I can appreciate it and reflect it on not-altogether-unfruitfully.