Economy and Language Vitality
Event Description
2026 MIC Symposium on Multilingualism | Featured Talk
Economy and Language Vitality
Abstract: In this paper I discuss some aspects of language vitality that have been overlooked in the dominant discourse on language endangerment and loss, especially the ecosystemic factors that have enabled the dominant language to prevail. These include the socioeconomic structures in which competing languages have coexisted. Globalization, national demographic size, and political power do not always explain why some languages have become extinct. One must explain the specific ecosystemic conditions in which a group has been (dis)advantaged politically and economically. Is it true that the language-shifters are ashamed of their cultural traditions and that in European colonies they have always done so to speak European languages because these are prestigious? What does the migration and contact history of mankind since the development of long-distance trade and the rise of empires tell us about language shifts and the vitality of cultures, including languages? Are Indigenous peoples the only ones who have lost their languages?
Speaker: Salikoko S. Mufwene is the Edward Carson Waller Distinguished Service Professor in the Dept. of Linguistics, the Dept. of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity, and the College at the University of Chicago. His research area is evolutionary linguistics, focused on the phylogenetic emergence of languages and language speciation, and on language vitality. He has authored and (co-)edited dozens of books and has published hundreds of articles, book chapters, and book reviews. He is a fellow of the Linguistic Society of America, of the American Philosophical Society, and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He assumed the Chaire Mondes francophones at the Clollège de France for the 2023-24 academic year.
Faculty Response Panel:
Location: Humanities 1006
Economy and Language Vitality
Abstract: In this paper I discuss some aspects of language vitality that have been overlooked in the dominant discourse on language endangerment and loss, especially the ecosystemic factors that have enabled the dominant language to prevail. These include the socioeconomic structures in which competing languages have coexisted. Globalization, national demographic size, and political power do not always explain why some languages have become extinct. One must explain the specific ecosystemic conditions in which a group has been (dis)advantaged politically and economically. Is it true that the language-shifters are ashamed of their cultural traditions and that in European colonies they have always done so to speak European languages because these are prestigious? What does the migration and contact history of mankind since the development of long-distance trade and the rise of empires tell us about language shifts and the vitality of cultures, including languages? Are Indigenous peoples the only ones who have lost their languages?
Speaker: Salikoko S. Mufwene is the Edward Carson Waller Distinguished Service Professor in the Dept. of Linguistics, the Dept. of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity, and the College at the University of Chicago. His research area is evolutionary linguistics, focused on the phylogenetic emergence of languages and language speciation, and on language vitality. He has authored and (co-)edited dozens of books and has published hundreds of articles, book chapters, and book reviews. He is a fellow of the Linguistic Society of America, of the American Philosophical Society, and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He assumed the Chaire Mondes francophones at the Clollège de France for the 2023-24 academic year.
Faculty Response Panel:
- S. N. Sridhar (Panel Chair; SUNY Distinguished Service Professor, Asian and Asian American Studies
and Mattoo Center for India Studies) - Manisha Desai (Executive Director of Center for Changing Systems of Power; Empowerment Charitable Trust
Endowed Professor in Global Citizenship; Professor of Sociology and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies,
Senior Research Associate, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development) - Sara Hamideh (Associate Professor, Marine and Atmospheric Sciences)
- Janet Ward (Professor, Philosophy; Associate Provost for Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences Initiatives)
Location: Humanities 1006
