Michael Covel

University of Montana

ANTY 220S

12 December 2014

Language Preservation:
Questioning Linguistic Theory and Practice

Language exists as the primary vehicle for human communication and is vital to our functioning in

small groups, societies and civilizations. Yet it is precisely because language occurs in diverse forms

across all manner of social and political boundaries, it cannot be argued that any one language is

superior to or “more fit” – in a Darwinian sense – than another. Efforts of contemporary linguists to

preserve all languages with their unique structures and worldviews have often met with mixed

successes; it not always being possible to save a language due in large part to the inability to preserve

its speakers. The alternative has been to elicit as much data as possible, record the sounds of the

language, the lilt of its intonation, the structure of its grammar and the character of its idiom. These

collections of laboriously collected data often then represent the only remaining presence of languages

which have passed out of common use.

It is a convenient notion that a language might be preserved by the methods described above,

described well enough to be learned by later generations and taught to the children of a new

renaissance of cultural heritage. What is unclear, however, is how much of the language has been lost –

not in terms of its grammatically precise description, or adequately encyclopedic lexicon – in the

undocumented content of countless points of individual cognitive associations and linguistic intuition

which informs culturally coherent expression. In the simplest possible terms, a language which has

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been preserved without its speakers is an artifact out of context, more an archaeological curiosity than

an anthropological asset; the physical remains without the spirit.

In the cause of obtaining a more full understanding of why this is so, it is necessary to step beyond

the attempt of linguistic theory to reduce the phenomenon of human language to a systematic calculus

which is intended to express thought itself in the notation of axioms, lemmas and syntactic frameworks.

There is some uncertainty whether these descriptions - while accurate reflections of form - adequately

capture the holistic functioning of language which is a dynamic and collaborative cognitive process.

Two linguists working in the 1930s raised significant concerns about just how much of the subjective

human experience was determined by language form and use. Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf

asserted that language was indeed a major component of conscious perception, a theory termed

linguistic relativism.

We see and hear and experience very largely as we do because the language habits

of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation. (Sapir; Carroll, 134)

We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language. The categories

and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there

because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is

presented in a kaleidoscope flux of impressions which has to be organized by our

minds— . . . We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances

as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this

way—an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified

in the patterns of our language . . . (Whorf; Carroll, 212-214)

In the latter portion of the 20th Century the idea that language was – in whole or in part –

responsible for the character of our perceptions were strongly rejected by the theory of universalism,

championed by Noam Chomsky. Human experiential perception was held to be independent of

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language; the sounds which are responsible for producing the myriad tongues defined as inherently

without meaning and only arbitrarily associated with the physical world. As a consequence, the idea

that all language could be reduced to the aforementioned systematic representations took hold.

Fortunately, the door was not shut with sufficient force as to not permit a ray of doubt to penetrate:

In another sense, the study of formal properties of language reveals something of

the nature of man in a negative way: it underscores, with great clarity, the limits

of our understanding of those qualities of the mind that are apparently unique to

man and that must enter into his cultural achievements in an intimate, if still quite

obscure, manner. (Chomsky, 76)

It is precisely this "obscure manner" which is of vital concern when approaching language

preservation as an instrumental component of the preservation of cultural heritage. In cases where

indigenous languages have acquired an endangered status sometimes a generation or more goes by

wherein the children of a culture are raised learning to cogitate in a "foreign" L1 (first language) before

being reintroduced to their "native" language. They are often being taught by heritage speakers or those

trained from linguistic data gathered from heritage speakers. There are two aspects of this process

which ought to be critically considered in this ray of light and the landscape which it illuminates.

The first is the perceived role of language in relation to cultural identity as perceived by its

speakers. It is not a foregone conclusion nor should it be presumed that all peoples consider their

heritage language to be of critical importance to their cultural identity. The Yaqui of southwestern

Arizona, for example, generally consider their native language to be a repository of cultural heritage,

yet it is essentially no Yaqui's first language. Roughly 70% of Yaqui are Spanish speakers with some

knowledge of English and only a vanishingly small minority have a functional knowledge of Yaqui.

While some cultural anthropologists might consider this to be a disastrous scenario, it is perceived by

the Yaqui to be a natural adaptive process, with languages functioning “not … as systems of

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communicative competence, but rather as vehicles of access to the socioeconomic domains they

symbolize.” (Trujillo) Thus, ignorance of the heritage language has little or no stigma; the importance

of language is that it allows one to participate in society, to succeed and prosper.

Revitalization efforts in Yaqui communities focus on participation, making the language functional

and relevant in the widest possible array of contexts. There is little perceived value – or confidence in

success – in preserving the Yaqui language as a relic; a mere linguistic description replete with cultural

footnotes. Significantly, classes are taught at community colleges which emphasize and connect the

Yaqui language to its culture, a culture undiminished as its language has gradually passed out of use.

In other cultural contexts language is seen as an intrinsic aspect of cultural identity and its loss is

tantamount to the loss of the culture itself. Arabs in diaspora are one such group, where maintaining

Arabic is seen as an effort undertaken at the individual and community level to preserve a vehicle for

the transmission of Arab culture. Given the extremely broad and diverse nature of the Arab world, an

ethnic definition of what constitutes an Arab is difficult to manage, therefore the Arab League has

arrived at a cultural definition with a primarily linguistic underpinning: “An Arab is a person whose

language is Arabic, who lives in an Arabic-speaking country, and who is in sympathy with the

aspirations of the Arabic-speaking peoples.” Such is the influence of Arabic – in terms of its idiom and

that it is the language of Islam – that the simplest of cultural exchanges become difficult or impossible

without it. Many Muslims will argue as well that the Qur'an printed in any language other than Arabic

is not the Qur'an, but an interpretation of the meaning of the Qur'an.1 ‫ع َوجٍ لَّ َعلَّ ُه ْم‬ َ ‫قُ ْر َءانًا‬
َ ‫ع َر ِبيًّا‬
ِ ‫غي َْر ذِي‬

َ‫“ يَتَّقُون‬A Qur'an in Arabic without any deviation so that they may become righteous” (39:28)

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. Interestingly, there is little such sentiment about the Bible printed in Arabic or any other language among Arab
Christians. The exception is among the extreme minority of Syriac speaking Christians who hold that since Aramaic was the
language of Christ, the Bible should be read and services performed in Syriac. From a linguistic perspective this is
interesting, as all such efforts to render the Bible in Syriac are themselves works of translation.

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 Having considered that there are certain contexts in which language is viewed as being an integral

component of cultural expression and those where language tends to serve a more adaptable and

pragmatic role independently of cultural identity, the second consideration is whether or not there is a

more objective method available to establish the relationship between language and culture. Could it be

argued that language is inarguably a vehicle for the transmission of cultural idiom in every case,

regardless of the subjective valuation of its speakers? Ultimately, this may rest upon the particulars of

defining language as a system of effective communication of ideas between two individuals capable of

ideating and cogitating. This obviously occurs with the most ease when speakers communicate with

one another in the same language, and it is possible – though not without difficulty – in most cases to

employ a process of translation when they are speakers of different languages. The issue becomes

somewhat more complicated when the speakers are from widely different cultures, and the attempt to

communicate is further burdened with ideas and connotations which are not explicitly encoded in the

words, but implicit in the lexical knowledge of the speaker.

“The notion of meaning is internal to a semiotic system: it has to be admitted that in a given

semiotic system there exists a meaning assign to a term. The notion of sense, on the other hand, is

internal to utterances or, rather, to texts.” (Eco, 275) Communication at the level of explicit denotative

meaning is difficult to objectively tie to any notion of cultural context, but the sense in which those

meanings are interpreted are produced by the cognitive environment of the speaker/listener, and

therefore must be subject to the process by which that environment was shaped: namely, their culture.

From this notion springs assertions that preserving languages is of critical importance to prevent loss of

knowledge or worldview which are particular to and inseparable from their native speakers.

When Greg Anderson and David Harrison traveled far and wide in the cause of language

preservation, the techniques which they employed – insofar as they were evidenced in the film The

Linguists – were primarily those of language documentation. They remarked at several points on

particular structures and the use of language specific vocabularies, but were clearly focused on
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documenting language form rather than language function. The notion that bound up in this form is a

proprietary knowledge, or a distinct way of perceiving the world is an echo of the arguments of

Benjamin Whorf. One must ask the question: if speakers of Kallawaya really are the caretakers of a

vast and secret storehouse of information about herbal healing, to what degree is this being enabled by

the form of their language? Are these facts about the world not true for those who don't speak

Kallawaya? Is the knowledge simply “untranslatable”? I think one must, at some juncture, abandon the

notion that encoding is itself significant to the preservation of knowledge. Naturally, one must be able

to decipher the data, but humans do this all the time in each of their respective languages with no

apparent deficit arising from one to the next. What significant differences do arise cross-linguistically

tend to have much more to do with opinions, with modes of conception and with the connotations of

given lexemes rather than their explicit denotations.

For example, let us assume that both I and a speaker of another language are both familiar with

“trucks.” Let us further suppose that we each describe the same object and our similar experience of

that object thus: I describe it as a “utility vehicle” while the speaker of this language uses a term with

the meaning “big thing full of noise.” While we have both succeeded in describing the reality of this

experience in a way which is meaningful and translatable, there is an obvious difference in

conceptualization. I perceive the truck to be a thing of usefulness, performing a specific function which

might excuse its other objectionable qualities from being rendered in the immediate vocabulary. Not so

for the other speaker; his experience is likely similar to mine, but the usefulness of the machine has

instead been omitted in favor of the objectionable quality. And yet the fact remains: I may not know for

sure whether being big and noisy is accompanied by any negative connotation in the culture of this

person. I need more cultural data before the linguistic data even begins to make sense at this level of

meaning.

When one examines language reintroduction programs such as in Brazil where speakers of

Portuguese are being educated in their “native” languages, we are directly confronted with this issue of
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conceptualization. How much of the culturally significant information which contributes to meaning

has been preserved and is contributing to the educational process? With emphasis on form – grammar,

lexicon – and pedagogical sustainability, it is clear that the language is being learned in a way that it

never was when it was a living language. The effort itself is undertaken to promulgate the

circumstances by which these languages can become living languages once again, but they will be

different than those which have informed their pedagogy. To some extent these efforts to preserve

languages by conventional methods of field linguistics and L2 (second language) education are the

equivalent of an environmentalist attempting to save a forest by commissioning a series of detailed

topographical maps and aerial photographs. Even if one were to successfully duplicate such an

environment elsewhere, one would possess at best only a relative facsimile and a unique ecology.

In this way there is a sense in which any effort to “preserve” is itself an act of creation. It is more

appropriate to think of these as auxiliary modes of a traditional language which have been created in

the minds of speakers from a new tradition. This is not so much an act of preservation or of

reintroduction as it is a novel recycling of a lexicon and a grammar to inform a renaissance of cultural

identity. It is certain that these efforts are not without value, but they might benefit from additional

domains of research and the consideration of culturally informed cognitive function of language as

being of at least equal status to the more concrete aspects of the discipline. This work has generally

fallen into the domain of the lexicographer, whose work centers around a corpus of data and is some

significant period of time removed from the acquisition of the data itself. Further research might reveal

patterns of thinking, conventional idiom, and cultural tendencies in descriptive resource.

Here again we are confronted with the problem of essentially working backwards to reach

inferences from what is potentially insufficient data. Experientialist linguistics tends to support the

notion that our cognitive metaphors are inextricably bound up in our native cultural and environmental

influences. It is possible to analyze language itself as a complex implementation of metaphorical

devices designed to communicate meaning across the gaps that define our individual cognitive spaces.
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 O mine animals, answered Zarathustra, talk on thus and let me listen! It refresheth

me so to hear your talk: where there is talk, there is the world as a garden unto me.

How charming it is that there are words and tones; are not words and tones

rainbows and seeming bridges 'twixt the eternally separated?

To each soul belongeth another world; to each soul is every other soul a back-

world. Among the most alike doth semblance deceive most delightfully: for the

smallest gap is most difficult to bridge over. For me- how could there be an outside-

of-me? There is no outside!

But this we forget on hearing tones; how delightful it is that we forget! Have not

names and tones been given unto things that man may refresh himself with them? It

is a beautiful folly, speaking; therewith danceth man over everything. (Nietzsche)

While Nietzche wrote the above in the late 19th century characterizing the epistemological aspect

of our communication, work by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in the late 20th century has aimed at

refining our understanding of its methodology and function. The assertion is that metaphor permeates

our communicative processes to such an extent that it cannot be viewed as a phenomenon of language,

but rather the inverse: that language itself is a phenomenon of metaphor.

… different accounts of truth give rise to different accounts of meaning. For us,

meaning depends on understanding. A sentence can't mean anything to you unless

you understand it. Moreover, meaning is always meaning to someone. There is no

such thing as meaning of a sentence in itself... it is always the meaning of the

sentence to someone, a real person or hypothetical typical member of a speech

community. (Lakoff and Johnson, 184)

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 For the ethnographer or the field linguist, particularly one who is not a member of the speech

community or a speaker of the language, these considerations become problematic when doing

documentation or preservation because it becomes clear that it is entirely possible to preserve the form

of a language – its lexicon and its grammar – and fail to preserve its character; the color of its rainbows

and bridges connecting the eternally separated. It is this possibility which raises the rather interesting

observation that “the most qualified individuals for preserving a language are the speakers of the

language themselves.” (Conversation with Dr. Tully Thibeau, University of Montana, October 2014)

Initiatives which seek to educate native speakers on linguistic methodology in the service of

developing pedagogical materials might prove to the most effective mode of preserving languages in

their complete aspect, as native speakers bring with them the full complement of metaphor and idiom

implicit to their understanding of the language but also to the culture which informs it. Further research

would be necessary to confirm this hypothesis, but it is a far more elegant and plausible approach to

resolving the issues being dealt with here than attempting to incorporate lexicography and

psycholinguistic methodology into typical field research environments.

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Bibliography

Chomsky, Noam. The Essential Chomsky. (ed. Anthony Arnove, 2008)

Eco, Umberto. Kant and the Platypus (1999)

Ironbound Films. The Linguists. (Greg Anderson and David Harrison, 2008)

Lakoff and Johnson . Metaphors We Live By. (1980)

Nietzche, Frederich. Also Sprach Zarathustra. Thus Spake Zoroaster, common translation. (1891)

Spair, Edward and Whorf, Benjamin. Language, Thought, and Reality. (ed. Carroll, John. 1956)

Trujillo, Octaviana. A Tribal Approach to Language and Literacy Development in a Trilingual Setting.
(Northern Arizona University, 1997)

The Qu'ran. Translation and linguistic analysis by the Language Research Group, Univeristy of Leeds.
htttp://corpus.quran.com

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