The Imperialism of Language.

The Imperialism of Language

I got some interesting email responses to my post yesterday, “The Language of Imperialism” that got me thinking. I have no problem with people disagreeing with me, or making me look at any issue from a different point of view — Tom from Denver wrote:

> [After kindly mentioning he likes reading my blog and often agrees with my views, he begins:]
> “I have to comment though on your latest entry “The
> Language of Imperialism”. I grew up in England
> (I've been in Denver now for 22 years), and have
> many relatives there and in France. There are some
> extremely practical reasons for many other countries
> to teach English as a second language, which is
> exactly WHY they do. Being an Engineer, one of the
> most obvious reasons is technical communication.
> The majority of technical publications and
> proceedings are published around the world in
> English because re-creating the complex terms and
> ideas in such things in some other languages is a
> complicated waste of time as many technical people
> use English terminology anyway. Also, communicating
> these ideas via computer and other electronic media
> requires the use of a keyboard. If you are
> Japanese, for instance, this rapidly becomes and
> impossibility since you would need a keyboard with
> thousands of characters just to be able to generate
> the average document. They get around this by using
> either a Japanese shorthand, which in itself is a
> separate skill to learn, or English, which make
> communicating to your target audience (i.e. Western
> Consumers) much easier anyway.
>
> Don't get me wrong though, I agree with you that
> everyone should be open to learning a new language
> and making the effort to “do as the Romans do” as it
> were. I break out my rusty French when I go to
> France, but inevitably, the people I speak to take
> pity on me (and themselves) and speak English. With
> the world getting smaller all the time, English may
> become more dominant, but the mindset needed to
> grasp the ideas of a foreign land will always be a
> valuable asset. It is in fact the kind of thing
> that could prevent wars. Given that our current
> leader in this country can barely speak English, it
> isn't surprising that diplomacy failed when you
> think about it in these terms.
>
> If you haven't already read it, you might find Bill
> Bryson's book “The Mother Tongue” a fascinating and
> funny read about the history of the English
> language. Recently I have been very interested in
> language history along with word etymology, so this
> book was well worth the read for me. Considering
> where English comes from (Celtic, Latin, German,
> French, and others) it really doesn't surprise me
> that it has become such an international language.”

Thanks Tom, food for thought. I'll check out the book too.
[Halley's Comment]

neener neener neener I'm citing this in my dissertation, neener neener neenr

A bit of irony. My grad school advice must have picked up some serious Googlejuice lately, because I am getting a ton of email about it. Much—all right, all—of this email asks my advice. Er, this is, to put it mildly, slightly strange. Guys? Gals? I’m the one who crapped out, remember? Failed? Crawled… [Caveat Lector]

if you have or are considering grad school read this article. i will say that i am opinion that there is only 1 reason to get a ph.d. and that this. 'you cannot imagine yourself without it' when i was 8 i said i'd get a ph.d., it is what i've always wanted, but i fully realize that my entire justification is just that, 'my imagination' if you think yours is otherwise, i suggest a very close examination of what you want and are.

I've been lucky of course, I've had a great graduate school experience, all of the people that I've dealt with have been supportive and interested in my work in some manner, sure some have been critical, but then I've been critical of some people too, but the end of a ph.d. especially in the humanities and the social science is more about your own personal pursuit of knowledge and how you can relate that to the rest of the world.

Keeping in mind that my imagination of the ph.d. is one of many possible solutions to the question, you could of course be the girl or guy as above who finally solves question z, whatever that may be, but let me be clear, even if you think you've solved it. this is always a contentious world, you probably have solved nothing, and in that regard i suggest reading some of the finer writings on academia, like white noise, or homo academicus.

to each is own, don't try to make it more, cause then yer just being pretentious;)

Just Build It. Wise words from Duncan Mackenzie:Stop debating this issue; pick a language and build something… you'll feel better…. [Incessant Ramblings]

this is frequently my approach. Today i was talking with Len Hatfield about the CATH's watermark project and i told him, you know it doesn't matter who has done what before, if you get the dtd for the IPH standard done, and give it to everyone else, then you become the leader. Likewise, if you make the bit of software that you think that you need, you can just by doing it, become the person in the field. Now for Paper Historians, we might be talking a smaller field, but overall the concept is the same.

the glue factory. From today’s dive into mark: In the future, there will be so much open source software available, programmers will be… [mamamusings]

teaching this isn't teaching programming, it is teaching philosophy and understanding. more or less it is 'all i learned about data i learned from wittgenstein'

The Blake Archive's Archive. The Blake Archive's internal project records, now on file at the amazing Charles Babbage Institute: The bulk of the collection is comprised of the blake-proj messages (entire contents of Boxes 1-3, and Box 4, folders 1-17, Box 5, folders 7-12,… [Matthew G. Kirschenbaum]

if i understand this correctly, this is moving electronic history to paper history, and I'm not sure that is a good thing….

Thoughts from my first day of work. 1. I miss my iBook.

2. But I also missed Homesite. For my purposes, BBEdit is usable, but
HomeSite kicks its ass all over the place.

3. Where to start with Outlook. I got so used to the many fantastic features
of Entourage that Outlook (at least the version I'm using here) is almost
unusable.

4. Why is the CTRL key all the way over there?

5. But damn, this Pentium 4 is fast. The iBook is downr… [kottke.org]

mmmm, homesite, if i was still using windows, i would be using homesite, which i still think is one of the best basic training aids for web systems design and programming. if you think that ctrl key is far, try a SUN keyboard, gack! the transition takes me a second or two every time…. Now my new mac has more keys than my pc keyboards, which is problematic also. why can't everyone just stay with the old ibm mechanical keyboards, nice click, nice feel, all is good.

Koïchiro Matsuura, the Director-General of UNESCO, …. Koïchiro Matsuura, the Director-General of UNESCO, spoke at the recent Paris conference on Open Access. He has now put a summary of his UNESCO remarks online. Excerpt: “The new economic and technological environment is raising concerns about the erosion of access to certain information and knowledge whose free sharing facilitated scientific research and education in past decades.” [FOS News]

it didn't facilitate it. It provided for it. Without the free access to scientific information you should as well throw the whole concept of science away, remember Robert K. Merton's norms of science, communism of knowledge is central to the project. No one should own scientific knowledge, people should own the tertiary products of knowledge. Sometimes people think that I am too hardline on this topic, but come on knowledge is our business, we generate and provide knowledge to the world as scholars, without that, we should as well just go private.

Computers, Freedom, Privacy. I'm off to New York for the annual Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference, one of the most important gatherings of… [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

if you can go, you should go, this conference has a fine reputation.

Colin Steele, Phoenix rising: new models for the r …. Colin Steele, Phoenix rising: new models for the research monograph? A preprint in the ANU E-Press Archive, forthcoming from Learned Publishing, 16, 2 (2003) pp. 111-122. Abstract: “There is significant evidence that traditional university presses are continuing to face financial crises. Outlets for research monographs are drying up, print runs are being reduced and monograph costs are increasing. The combination of the digital networked environment and open-archive initiatives may, however, provide the opportunity, through institutional repositories, to rethink the role and nature of the distribution of research monographs in a university setting. The adoption of new models, untrammelled by the structures of the past, while still retaining editorial and refereeing standards, could revolutionize the access and distribution patterns of research knowledge within university frameworks. Ultimate success will depend, however on programmes of scholarly advocacy in scholarly communication with the academic author as both creator and as consumer.” [FOS News]

while we didn't say this first, we did say something very similar in a presentation that i made in 2000 about the possibilities for online academic publishing.

this is the type of thing that sunshine laws in the u.s. should provide. i want everything the president says to anyone public knowledge now, unless it is directly related to national security, and that should be vetted by appointees by a senate committee.

Since the EU Council decided in May 2001 to provid …. Since the EU Council decided in May 2001 to provide open access to its non-classified meeting papers, the public has been taking advantage of the opportunity. “The number of requests for access to EU Council of Ministers documents has doubled to 2,394 since the entry into force of the legislation and 80 per cent of these demands have resulted in full disclosure.” Some member states, like Sweden, Denmark, and Finland, and some press organizations, like Reuters, think the EU policy should go further to open up the process of its decision-making and educate the public about its deliberations. (Thanks to QuickLinks.) [FOS News]