Re: World English (was: Fictional auxlangs as artlangs)

On Thu, 25 Dec 2008 18:21:36 -0500, <deinx nxtxr> <deinx.nxtxr@...>
wrote:

>> [mailto:CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu] On Behalf Of Paul Kershaw
>> But language has several other purposes
>> that are at odds with linguistic globalization. For one
>> thing, people have a great deal of pride in their native
>> languages (that's what helped Ukrainian and other languages
>> survive the Soviet Union, for instance). For another, as many
>> people on this list know perhaps better than others, there's
>> value in having a communication system that has "in group"
>> and "out group" member identification (in some cases on this
>> list, "in group" is one person :D ).
>
>Again, there's the global trend toward a monolithic existence.  Once the
>populations are all moved about and intermixed cultures will die out in
>favor of some new gloabel superculture.
Granting that this trend exists, it doesn't seem to me that it would take
the calamities you suppose it would to change it, and make cultural
diversification trendy again -- and this would knock out your driving force
behind the voracity of English.  I wonder whether, for comparison's sake,
there are writings attesting whether people felt this way when Sumer or
Greece or Rome or what have you were taking over the known world, that all
the conquered peoples were compelled to adopt the monolithic conquering
culture etc. in place of theirs.

If a culture wants their in-group language, media connectivity of the
out-group shouldn't change this.  I seem to recall a study looking to see
whether RP (maybe?) had done any better for itself in the English dialectal
distribution with the advent of some medium, and finding that it hadn't
especially.  (Anyone know what I'm talking about, or is this complete
fabrication?)

For that matter, why is an interlanguage bound to drive out local languages?
 Why couldn't the situation instead develop into, say, widespread and stable
diglossia?

Alex