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Welcme to The MacMillan Report. 
I am Marilyn Wilkes your host.
And our guest is Joseph Errington, a 
professor of anthropology and
international and area studies at Yale 
University.
Professor Errington is interested in the 
linguistic dimensions of social life,
ranging from the social implications of 
patterns of verbal communication to forms
and uses of sociolinguistic hierarchies 
to the linguistic effects of large scale
dynamics. 
His research and writing have focused on
linguistic dimensions of modernization 
and identity in Java and Indonesia.
Reflecting his broader interests in 
semiotics and the politics of language.
Today, we talk with Professor Errington 
about his book, Linguistics in a Colonial
World: A Story of Language, Meaning, and 
Power.
Welcome, Professor Errington.
>> Thank you very much.
>> Let's begin with an overview of your 
book.
Tell us about it.
>> Well, it's a book that I wrote to try and 
address a kind of gap in the literature
in colonial studies or postcolonial 
studies.
in the last 30 years or so, a great deal 
of literature, especially in the
humanities and history, about the 
colonial period from a critical point of
view. 
a few articles have been written about
linguistics as part of the colonial 
project, but no one had tried to do an
overview, which is what the book is 
supposed to be.
It actually, it has a more practical 
reason for being which what I was asked
to do, review article for the annual 
review of anthropology on the topic.
So I did that and an editor for a book 
series saw it and asked me if I would
turn it into a book. 
I think it would be much easier than it
was I agreed.
>> Okay.
>> So.
>> Let's talk about the term linguistics. 
Define it for us.
>> That's a, there have to be several
answers to that question. 
in this, at this time linguistics is the
study of language structures. 
But always trying to find out about
neurocognitive endowments of human. 
What it is that makes members of the
human species different from all others, 
because of their capacity to require and
use human languages which are distinct 
from all other forms of communicate,
communicative behavior we know about.
>> Mm-hm.
>> but in an earlier era and the one that 
this book is about a simpler answer was
that people who did linguistics were 
working to reduce speech to writing.
>> Okay.
>> I always figure out how to take what they
heard coming out of mouths and presented 
with an orthography on paper.
>> Mm-hm.
>> and for the work I was doing, that word
reduce really has two meanings. 
Because on one hand, to reduce speech to
writing, you have to get its essence. 
Reduce it to its essence and put that on
paper, which many of them do quite 
successfully, but, they were also
reducing it in that they were getting rid 
of things that they judged not to be
important. 
But what they were getting rid of was, in
fact, for the speakers of these languages 
in colonial situations really quite
important and had meanings in their lives 
that was made to go away in this work.
>> Okay.
And what do you mean by the term colonial 
linguistics?
>> Most basically, the work that was done,
this reducing of speech to writing in 
situations of colonial encounter.
Where, at first, Europeans and later 
Americans, went far from home with
projects of various kinds involving 
speakers of radically different
languages, members of radically different 
cultures.
>> Okay.
And how did you do the research for the 
book?
>> Well, for this the research was mostly in
the secondary literature because it 
covers four centuries, four continents,
and I only know about a little bit of 
that u, from my own research.
So I relied a great deal on secondary 
literature.
Some of my colleagues who had written in 
this general topic about specific,
specific times and places were quite 
helpful in this regard.
But it was, I was heavily reliant, 
especially on literature by historians
and historians of linguistics.
>> Okay. 
How does colonial linguistics influence
contemporary language and cultural 
differences?
Can you give us some examples?
>> Sure suppose I give you two examples.
>> Okay.
>> One where colonial linguists created a 
situation where they divided people.
In another where they, they united them.
>> Oh, perfect.
>> So although, I didn't use this example in 
the book, I if you look at South Africa
now, you find they have 11 national 
languages.
>> Okay.
>> And if you ignore Afrikaans and English,
which are European derived, there are 
nine native African languages.
Now, five of those are officially 
distinct languages.
But if you listen to them and you look 
even at the way they're written you can
see that they are very similar. 
They are similar enough that, you could
call them dialects of the same language.
>> Mm-hm.
>> Except that when missionary linguists, 
they were most of the linguists doing
this work came to those regions of what 
is now South Africa.
They divided up the territories so the 
French had some territory, the British
had others, the Germans had others. 
And missionary linguists in each of those
areas did their own work, came up with 
their own ways of writing these
languages, used that to teach literacy, 
used it to convert people to
Christianity. 
And, when Independence came, the people
who spoke those languages, as far as they 
were concerned, these were distinct
languages.
>> Uh-huh.
>> And so, they continue to be to this day. 
Even when South African's linguists and
politicians themselves say that we can, 
as they say, harmonize these languages
into one, but that is resisted, because 
these are now regarded as distinct
languages. 
So that's a legacy of divisions between
the missionary linguists who did this 
work.
So there's an example of division.
>> Right.
>> if you look at the country a country like 
Indonesia, which is the one I know most
about. 
These days, if you go there you will find
that of a population of 270,000,000, 
220,000,000 speak Indonesian, the
national language.
>> Uh-uh.
>> in 1910, you would have heard perhaps, 2, 
2 million people, perhaps 2% of the
population speaking a language that now 
counts as Indonesian.
>> Mm-hm.
>> The reason for that is that the Dutch
Imperial Government decided it needed a 
language of administration, it didn't
want to use Dutch. 
So, it sent linguists out to create a
standard form of the Malay language and 
they started using that in their offices,
they started teaching it in their 
schools.
And that language was then taken over, 
sort of it was pirated by the first
Nationalists. 
And they said, this is no longer the
Dutch Malay, this is now Indonesian, the 
national language.
And long story short starting in the mid 
60s, that language was taught all around
a territory as big as the United States.
>> Uh-uh.
>> As the national language. 
So now, lo and behold, it is spoken from
one end of the country to the other. 
What's being spoken and what's being
learned has it's origins in the work of 
those linguists in the early 20th
century.
>> And[CROSSTALK] what, what's the time 
period?
How long did that take before that 
happened?
>> Well, Independence was, the, the
language's name was sort of changed in 
1928 by the Proto-Nationalists
Independence came in 1945. 
But it was really not until the late
1960s that a school system was built by 
the government, by the central government
top down everywhere on Indonesian 
territory.
And in those schools, that's where young 
people learned how to read and write, and
what they were learning to read and write 
was Indonesian.
So, by 1990 or so, perhaps, 60% of the 
population said they spoke Indonesian and
now it's closer to 90, 95%.
>> Okay. 
Here's a question for you.
Do you need to speak the language you're 
studying if you're a linguist?
>> That also depends on the kind of
linguistics you do.
>> Okay.
>> If you're doing linguistics of the kind I 
first mentioned and you're interested in
universal properties, not so much.
>> Mm-hm.
>> if you're interested in language as it 
plays out in people's lives the way I am,
yes you do.
>> Mm-hm.
>> And it is it is the goal and the constant 
frustration, because I will never speak
any language in Indonesia the way they 
do.
Every five year old speaks the language 
better than I do, but it doesn't stop me
from trying.
>> Mm-hm, good, good. 
in writing the book was there anything in
particular that really surprised you, or 
doing the research?
>> Yeah, the thing that surprised me the
most was, how the cases I was looking at 
from the colonial era are relevant for
looking at what is happening now in an 
era of language death and language
endangerment.
>> Mm-hm.
>> the condition of the world now is one in 
which languages are, are, are passing out
of use.
>> Right.
>> By the scores there might be 6000 
languages spoken now, in 40 years there
might be 2000.
>> Mm-hm.
>> So it's a, it's, it's like biodiversity. 
Linguistic diversity is go.
But in any case, linguists who are 
working now to try and save languages,
keep them from dying, sometimes find 
themselves in situations that are.
Curiously, like those of their colonial 
era predecessors in terms of the effects
of the decisions they make about how 
they're going to write languages down.
So, so there are ways in which, I mean, 
the last chapter of the book is really
addressed to them just saying if you look 
at your predecessors, maybe you can take
some lessons from inadvertent 
consequences of their work.
That was the thing that surprised me to 
be honest.
>> Right.
Right. 
So you mentioned that these languages are
dying off. 
Is it because literally the people who
speaking them are dying off?
>> Sometimes.
>> I mean, yeah. 
And, and then, should we, should we be
concerned that these languages are 
disappearing forever?
>> my answer.
>> [COUGH] Yes, your answer.
[COUGH] Yeah.
>> My answer is, my answer is yes. 
some languages are dying because the
people are dying I mean that's happened 
for many years.
I mean genocide kills languages not just 
groups.
But many more languages are dying because 
of what's called a globalization.
So an in, a language like Indonesian for 
instance, will probably be responsible
for the death of 250, 300 languages in 
the next two generations.
>> Wow.
>> And that's happening.
It's not that anybody's forcing people 
not to speak the local ethnic language.
It's that kids, you know, they, they see 
where the opportunities that they want
are. 
They want to move perhaps to the city.
They want a job that earns money, rather 
than working on a farm.
>> Mm-hm.
>> That requires Indonesian.
in some cases, parents will actually 
require the children to speak Indonesian,
or it could be Spanish in Latin America, 
or Russian in the former Soviet Empire.
the large national languages are the ones 
that are sort of taking them.
So there's no, it's hard to point at 
people and saying that they are engaging
in coercion. 
but there are times when you have to
wonder if people are really, if they have 
a choice in the matter.
>> Right.
I see.
>> and, and those are the situations that a 
linguist, or a linguist like me, in any
case, is concerned about. 
If people don't know that there's a
chance that they could save their 
language, well then, they don't have that
option. 
If, if a linguist can come and say, here
is, we can show you how to write your 
language or we can help you document it
on videotape.
>> Mm-hm.
>> If you offer that option to people and 
they want to make use of it, well, that's
a good thing.
>> Sure.
>> So, the strategy would be not to tell 
people to save their languages, but to
show them how to do it if they want.
>> Okay, very good. 
And, conclusions in your book.
>> Well, in some ways, I suppose that was
the conclusion.
>> Okay.
>> It's, it's a mistake to look back 80 or a 
100 years and think we're different from
that now and we know more and we don't 
makes those mistakes.
that we have habits of thought when it 
comes to language, and we have, we very
easily mistake the differences between 
what is it to speak a language and to
read and write it. 
And, always making those mistakes and
they're always bringing about 
consequences that we should at least
recognize whether or not we want them to 
happen.
So it's a very simple conclusion, but it 
is kind of broad.
>> Uh-uh.
>> In its effects.
>> Okay, very good.
Thank you so much for being here today 
with us and sharing some of your work.
>> Thank you.
It was my pleasure.
>> For more information about Professor 
Errington and his research, please visit
our website at yale.edu\macmillanreport. 
Be sure to join us again for another
episode of The MacMillan Report made 
possible through funding from the Whitney
and Betty MacMillan Center for 
International and Area Studies at Yale.
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