Progress Of Indic Languages Vs English

[Guest]

This post is mostly about European situation, but maybe that might give indications on India's case as well.

<i><b>(A) Stuff I have no access to:</b></i>
(6) Academic bilingual (multilingual) literacy in a western context:
http://wcx.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/22/4/421
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Written Communication, Vol. 22, No. 4, 421-471 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/0741088305280350
© 2005 SAGE Publications

<b>Commitments to Academic Biliteracy
Case Studies of Francophone University Writers</b>
Guillaume Gentil
Carleton University

This article examines the appropriation of academic biliteracy by three French-speaking students at an English-medium university in the Canadian province of Québec. Drawing on Hornberger’s continua model of biliteracy, Bourdieu’s critical social theory, and philosophical hermeneutics, the author conceptualizes individual biliterate development as a subjective and intersubjective evaluative response to social contexts of possibilities for biliteracy. Case study data were collected during 2  years and included autobiographical and text-based interviews, inventories and analyses of academic writing in English and French, classroom-based observations, field notes, and documentation of the legal, historical, institutional, and demographic contexts. Analyses of the participants’ negotiations and trajectories of bilingual academic writing development reveal the challenges and resources of bilingual writers to uphold their <b>commitment to academic biliteracy</b> within English-dominant institutional and disciplinary contexts. Implications for the advancement of multilingual academic literacies are drawn.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
(7) http://ywes.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/XLI/1/31.pdf
<b>The Dominance of English As a Language of Science: Effects on Other Languages and Language Communities</b>
contains, amongst others:
- Ulrich Ammon's <i>English as a Future Language of Teaching at German Universities? A Question of Difficult Consequences, Posed by the Decline of German as a Language of Science.</i>
- Kaplan's <i>English - the accidental language of science?</i>

(8) http://www.grin.com/en/preview/53651.html
<b>English, the lingua franca, as a global language and the decline of German as an international language of science</b>

(9) http://www.springerlink.com/content/wx6h3010356711t7/
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Sprachpolitik: Some Socio-Political Effects of English in Germany</b>
Stephen Wood1

(1)  Department of Political Science, University of Western Australia, Australia

<b>Abstract</b> <b>Language is a major component of identification for individuals and nations</b>, and linguistic difference has manifested itself as an enduring political issue. This continues in the age of globalization when the presence of a powerful global force, the English language, now less attached to a particular national entity, is viewed as intrusive among language groups that are, including in the most economically and technologically advanced countries. Some groups and individuals within Germany's postindustrial civil society are conducting an ardent defence of German against the encroachment of English. The German state, meanwhile, is pressured to support the national language while adapting, like the private economy, to new imperatives that tend to magnify the presence of English.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

<i><b>(B) Articles that are available:</b></i>
(10) http://www.ehistling.meotod.de/data/pape..._g_pub.pdf
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Is English a ‘Killer Language’?
The Globalisation of a Code</b>

<b>Abstract:</b> Does English act as a Killer-Language or not? The fact that English has gained the status of a world language goes back to British colonialism. English was imposed on the indigenous populace in order to strengthen the power of the colonists. As the example of Papua New Guinea shows, this can have serious consequences for people’s local culture, life and identity. After the Second World War, globalization boosted the further spread of the English language, therefore influencing the language of technology, science and commerce. It even has a huge influence on countries
which have an established political system and a written language of their own, such as Germany.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Thinks that English is a killer language in some situations but not others. Looks specifically at PNG and German situation.

(11) Did not read this (too long):
http://etd.adm.unipi.it/theses/available/e...ricted/tesi.pdf
<b>English as a Lingua Franca: a threat to European multilingualism?</b>
Conclusions are on p.95-96 of the PDF.

(12) http://www.wz-berlin.de/publikation/pdf/...s26-28.pdf
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>It Has to Be in English
The Role of German as the Language of Social Sciences in Europe</b>
By Máté Szabó


Discussion of this issue is entirely legitimate in view of the challenges faced by the New Europe due to globalization of the social sciences. Globalization “speaks English", in every area and field of the sciences. Another contemporary issue behind the discourse is the further evolution of the EU, which will have significant consequences on languages generally, and specifically on scientific language. I was asked some years ago by a committee of the Social Science Research Council to develop a background expert’s report for them on the language of social sciences in post-Communist central and eastern Europe. I concluded that, during the course of the social-science revival in the post-Communist democracies, German, as a common denominator or “lingua franca", vanished in the face of U.S.-based English-speaking social sciences. With the exception of Germany, Austria and the German-speaking cantons of Switzerland, where German is the main language of research and education, German is not used anywhere on a broad basis within social and cultural scientific exchange.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Then follows info on Russia, Germany and US after WWII.

Interesting bit on USAID in this article:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>No Alternatives for English</b>
After this turnabout, the pre-Communist hegemonial position of German as a common language of social sciences in central and eastern Europe no longer prevailed, and the position of the pre-Russian hegemonial language had gone with the Drittes Reich. The U.S.-based language hegemony of English took the territory for its own, in the absence of any serious alternatives. The reason for this is of course not only to be found in the fact that the reunified and democratic Germany did not itself enjoy a hegemonial position, but also in the general development of social sciences after the Second World War in western Europe and the world, consisting in the establishment of U.S. dominance which reached the former Communist countries several decades later.

<b>Within a much more humble framework, the United States repeated its overseas science and cultural-policy patterns of the post-war period using USAID and other federal or private democratic-development agencies and think tanks in order to gain dominance over the social sciences and political discourses of post-Soviet areas, where American aid was received enthusiastically and coupled with hopes of American capital, experts and military.</b> On the other hand, the considerable European-based democracy and development-aid programmes, such as Phare, also used English in management and communication if they wanted to reach more countries and cultures of the region, since English was the only medium which could be used among the applicants or project participants. Referring also to my own personal experience: when we established cooperation in political sciences between several countries from the region, English was taken as the language of communication without any further consideration, although Austrians participated as well.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

All in all, I'd say everyone agrees they don't really have any idea about the future. Some find English is a threat (even to established languages with prodigious recent literary output in technical fields), others say it is no threat.
But if technology and especially the internet has made English spread faster and further, then the same can make another language the next lingua franca. Similarly, technology and internet can be used to revive and invigorate other national and regional languages.

My own thoughts -
Assuming all else remains constant (no sudden disappearance of internet or other basic technology for example):
Speed of empire building = speed of empire falling;
Rome not built in a day = Rome didn't fall in a day (took centuries of decay once it set in);
Because of current technology English proliferates fast = something else can quickly replace it.