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Titolo: Komunikado kaj potenco el racia vidpunkto
Temo: Lingvoj en transnacia edukado
Tipo: Prezento
Verkinto(j): Tove Skutnabb-Kangas
Resumo: Longdistanca fizika komunikado estas multekosta, neefika, kaj malracia; mensa komunikado estas pli rimedoŝpara, pli rendimenta, kaj pozitiva por la paco kaj demokratio. Lingvoj estas la plej efikaj mensaj komunikiloj. Sed lingvoj ankaŭ vehiklas mens-koloniigan potencon. Tial raciaj lingvopolitikaj argumentoj ankoraŭ ne alportis ŝanĝon. Okcidentaj landoj pioniris kaj daŭre gvidas la lingvopolitikan malracion, la amasmortigon de lingvoj kaj kulturoj, kaj la malrespekton de lingvaj rajtoj; ili provadas disvastigi tiun politikon al aliaj mondopartoj, iom sukcese. Efikaj reformstrategioj nepre inkluzivas popolajn movadojn, redirekton de investorimedoj for de fizika al mensa komunikado, analizadon de perlingvaj mesaĝoj, maltoleron al la unulingvismo, kaj la evoluigon de ekologia pensoskemo en la lingvopolitiko.
Fonto: "Al lingva demokratio - Aktoj de la Nitobe-Simpozio de Internaciaj Organizaĵoj Prago, 20-23 julio 1996", UEA , 1998

'Artikolo' (2,5 Seiten mit Tabellen verbleibend)

Communication and Power –
A Rational Perspective
Tove Skutnabb-Kangas
Roskilde University, Denmark
Note: These notes are of necessity shorthand – see the bibliography for references on evidence of
many of my claims.
Physical and mental communication(s): Cost
When discussing the costs in communication, it is important to start with a differentiation of
what I shall call “physical” and “mental” aspects, at two levels, in relation to communication(s)
and in relation to power and control.
When people “communicate” with each other, they can travel themselves and exchange
commodities (“physical communication”), or they can exchange ideas (“mental communication”;
see Table 1, page 136). It seems to me that while the costs for physical communications are
enormous, the return on investment low and negative, and the rationale for much of the
movement of commodities non-existent (except for market capitalism), the costs for mental
communications are relatively much lower, the return on investment much higher and with few
side-effects, and the rationale a positive one for peace and democracy (on this, see, e.g. Sachs
[ed.] 1992 and Galtung 1996). Languages are our most cost-effective communication tools.
Table 1 – Communication (physical or mental) as exchange of commodities or ideas


Physical communication: exchange of commodities (including physical mobility of people) Mental communication: exchange of ideas
Means of communication Motorways, roads, railways, airplanes, airports, bridges, tunnels, ships, etc. Spoken and signed languages, visual and aural images
Tools (vehicles) needed by individuals Legs, bicycles, motorbikes, cars,lorries, etc.
Physical apparatus for speaking, signing, reading; paper & pen,board & chalk, typewriters, TVs, computers, radios, music instruments, clothes, food, movement, etc.
Cost for material investment by society Massive (see Means above) Relatively large (materials for language learning, training of teachers & translators, interpretation equipment etc.)
Cost for material investment by individual
Relatively large for anything above bicycle
Relatively small for most basic tools
Cost for mental investment by society
Massive (research, planning, production, maintenance)
Relatively large (research, planning, interpretation & translation)
Cost for mental investment by individual Relatively large (time & effort for language learning) Relatively large (time & effort)
Return On Investment (ROI) Negative, including environmental side-effects Positive

Table 2 – Exerting power: means, processes and sanctions

|| Sanctions| negative external (punishment, shame)| positive external (rewards, benefits,cooptation) | internal (guilt; good or bad conscience)

Punitive Remunerative
Ideological
Means
sticks
carrotsideas
Process
 (physical) force bargaining persuasion

(from Skutnabb-Kangas 1990, 16, mostly based on Galtung 1980)

Arguments
Does it help to show, with the help of rational arguments, that the costs are lower if a country,
groups of countries (like the EU or the NAFTA or the ACP) or world organisations (like
UNESCO) adopt rational language policies which include multilingualism (and Esperanto as one
part of this) and respect linguistic and cultural human rights? Is language policy going to be
changed with the help of rational arguments which show that it is better for the future of the
whole planet to support linguistic and cultural diversity (in addition to biodiversity) than to
enhance homogenisation as one of the results of linguistic and cultural genocide?
I am afraid rational arguments have not counted so far. Some important issues for discussion,
including some claims, could be as follows:
1. If linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism were to be promoted as part of a
rational language policy, this would mean respecting linguistic human rights, including
protecting and promoting minority languages. What is the record of Western states so far in
relation to linguistic human rights? Here are some of my answers:
• Linguistic human rights have not been respected. Dominant Western states have tried to
prevent the acceptance of international and/or regional human-rights instruments on language
rights, especially language rights in education.
• Educational language policies in the West have to a large extent been organised against
most scientific evidence about how education should be organised if it is to promote high levels
of multilingualism (see articles in Skutnabb-Kangas [ed.] 1995). It has involved linguistic
genocide for linguistic minorities and monolingual reductionism for linguistic majorities,
coupled with inefficient foreign-language teaching, and in both cases blaming the victims for the
results. The fact that high levels of multilingualism have been reached in most elite education
shows that the means for education promoting high levels of multilingualism are well known. It
would be perfectly possible to make everyone multilingual at high levels, without losing any
content matter (Skutnabb-Kangas and García 1995).
• A wrong educational language policy in underdeveloped countries, in many cases
promoted, advocated and partially financed by the West with its experts, is:
– the most important pedagogical reason for “illiteracy” in the world;
– the most efficient way of preventing the grassroots from organised resistance to continued
neocolonial exploitation.
Western language policies have to a large extent been based on false either-or thinking (you
need to choose between languages, you cannot have both this language and that language and
maybe others too). It has also promoted subtractive rather than additive language learning: the
learning of a dominant language has been presented as necessarily happening at the cost of a
dominated language, instead of in addition to it.
conference. But the important issue is to start a zero-tolerance campaign where we stop tolerating
both monolingual reductionism and the “diffusion of English” paradigm (see Table 3, based on
Tsuda 1994 – see also the discussion of this in Phillipson and Skutnabb-Kangas 1996), and start
advocating the “ecology of languages” paradigm, which includes minimally bilingualism but
hopefully multilingualism for all.

Table 3 –Diffusion of English and Ecology of language paradigms
The diffusion of English paradigm
– capitalism
– science and technology
– modernisation
– monolingualism
– ideological globalisation and internationalisation
– transnationalisation
– Americanisation and homogenisation of world culture
– linguistic, cultural and media imperialism
Ecology of language paradigm
– human-rights perspective
– equality in communication
– multilingualism
– maintenance of languages and cultures
– protection of national sovereignties
– promotion of foreign-language education

Finally, we have to show the controlling elites that the world is not a zero-sum game. It is not
necessarily so that if we win, they have to lose. Both can win, for instance from a rational
languages policy and from the granting of linguistic human rights to everyone. Or, at least:
everybody, including the dominant elites, loses if this linguistic irrationality continues.

bibliography is already translated
Bibliographie
Galtung, Johan. 1980. The True Worlds. A Transnational Perspective. New York: The Free
Press.
———. 1996. Peace by Peaceful Means. Peace and Conflict, Development and Civilization.
Oslo: International Peace Research Institute and London / Thousand Oaks / New Delhi: Sage.
Hamelink, Cees J. 1994. Trends in World Communication: On Disempowerment and Self-
Empowerment. Penang: Southbound, and Third World Network.
Phillipson, Robert and Tove Skutnabb-Kangas. 1996. “English Only worldwide, or language
ecology”. TESOL Quarterly, Special-Topic Issue: Language Planning and Policy, Thomas
Ricento and Nancy Hornberger, eds., 429-452.
———. 1997. “Lessons for Europe from language policy in Australia”. In Pštz, Martin (ed.).
1997. Language Choices. Conditions, Constraints and Consequences.
Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 115-159.
Sachs, Wolfgang (ed.). 1992. The Development Dictionary. A Guide to Knowledge as Power.
London / New Jersey: Zed Books.
Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove. 1990. Language, Literacy and Minorities. London: The Minority Rights
Group.
———. 1996a. “Educational language choice – multilingual diversity or monolingual