语言多样性与社会经济发展相关性的再认识

Re-understanding of the correlation between Linguistic Diversity and Socioeconomic Development

本文采用世界民族语言志和联合国开发计划署等机构统计的世界各国数据,对语言多样性与经济社会发展多项指标之间的相关性进行统计分析。统计结果发现,语言多样性与国家经济社会发展指数之间确实存在一定的关联,但并非"费什曼-普尔假说"所指出的负相关关系,而是分段相关关系。人均国民收入17000美元为相关关系的拐点。低于17000美元的中低收入国家语言多样性与人均国民收入之间整体呈显著负相关趋势;相反地,拐点之上的高收入国家则呈现出显著正相关趋势。根据这一结果,"费什曼-普尔假说"与Fishman(1991)研究之间的矛盾得到了比较合理的解释。语言多样性与国家经济社会发展指数之间的相关性体现的只是一种概率性趋势,不是一种因果关系。除了关注语言与经济发展之间的关系,我们更要关注语言与教育和生活质量等社会发展因素之间的互动。

This paper analyzes the correlation between linguistic diversity and economic and social development indicators with the data of Ethnologue and the United Nations Development Program. The statistics show that linguistic diversity and national socioeconomic development are indeed correlated but are not the pure inverse relationship indicated by "Fishman-Pool Hypothesis". We found that USD 17,000 of gross national income( GNI) per capita is the inflection point. The correlation between language diversity and economic development in countries with GNI per capita below USD 17,000 are significantly negative. Conversely,countries with GNI per capita above the inflection point USD 17,000 show a significant positive correlation between two indexes. Based on this result,the contradiction between the "Fishman-Pool Hypothesis"and the Fishman( 1991) study can be reasonably explained. However,the correlation between linguistic diversity and the national socioeconomic development index reflects only a probabilistic trend rather than the causal relationship. In addition to focusing on the relationship between language and economic development,we must also pay attention to the interaction between language and social development factors such as education and quality of life.