反殖民主义与语言通用度变化

Anti-colonialism and the change of the popularity of language

本文从语言经济学的视角对殖民与语言通用度的关系进行了分析,认为语言的通用程度取决于一国的经济、文化和科技实力,也与语言学习成本密切相关。语言殖民有助于宗主国语言通用程度的提高,当前国际语言的主导地位很大程度上是历史上语言殖民的结果;反殖民主义在一定程度上可以降低宗主国语言的通用度,但语言具有强烈的路径依赖特征,这种路径依赖不仅抵消了反殖民主义带来的宗主国语言通用度下降,并与经济、文化等因素的作用一道维持着当前世界语言的国际格局。

This paper examines the relationship between colonization and the popularity of language from the perspective of language economics.We argue that the popularity of language not only depends on the economic,cultural and technological strength of a country,but also is closely associated with the cost of language learning.Language colonialism helps to increase the popularity of suzerain language,and to a large extent,the dominant position of the current international language resulting from the language colonization in history.Although anti-colonialism can decrease the popularity of suzerain language,there is a strong path-dependence effect in the evolution of language,which not only offsets the decline of popularity of suzerain language brought about by anticolonialism,but also maintains the current international situation of world languages,with the effect of economic,cultural and other factors working together.