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An Exploratory Study of the Idea of an Auxiliary Universal Language

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An Exploratory Study of the Idea of an Auxiliary Universal Language An exploratory study of the idea of an Auxiliary Universal Language by Mojdeh Majidi, B. A. A thesis submitted to The Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Art School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies Carleton University Ottawa, Canada © 2007, Mojdeh Majidi Abstract We live in an increasingly interconnected world where the growing movements of ideas, goods, information, money and people across national boundaries and technological advancements have led to the urgent need to have a common secondary language to partake in the global community. This study intends to extend the literature on the idea of an Auxiliary Universal Language (AUL), to explore the features of an AUL, and to discuss the rationale and feasibility of language planning of an AUL. It is in addition my intention to try to find answers for how it can actually be planned through international planning. To explore the idea of an AUL and answer the research questions I used two resources. First, after re-examining the literature and extending the literature on Language Policy and Planning I present a tentative model for language planning of an AUL. Second, to strengthen the conclusions from the first resource I conducted two sets of interviews to find out how my research participants who were thirteen graduate students in School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies at Carleton University could contribute to this exploratory study. ii Acknowledgments I would like to express my gratitude to all those who gave me the possibility to complete this thesis. First, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Professor Lynne Young for supervising my study, providing constructive feedback and offering direction whenever I needed it. She encouraged me and gave me the support and confidence to accomplish my Master’s degree, which seemed impossible when I first started this journey. I would also like to acknowledge the illuminating lectures of Professor Eve Haque on different issues involved in Language Policy and Planning that gave me new insights on how to address my research questions. Also I would want to thank her for agreeing to be on my thesis committee. I would also like to extend my gratitude to Professor Graham Smart who agreed to be on my thesis committee. I would also like to thank Professor Natasha Artemeva who not only broadened my view of language and language use in society, but also helped me to believe in myself and pursue my passions to do research. I am also grateful of Mr. Jaffer Sheyholislami whose questions and concerns about the subject of the thesis deepened my understanding of it. I also thank the research participants whose ideas supplement my exploratory study. I am also grateful of my father and my mother whose support and encouragement has always been there, in particular my mother who over the last ten years has always been with me in spirit. I would like to give my special thanks to my husband Ramin Malakoti whose insightful opinions about the subject of my thesis and also his support, patience, encouragement and love enabled me to complete this work. iii Table of contents Abstract ……………….…………………………………………...…………...…………ii Acknowledgement ………………………………………….……………………………iii Table of contents…………………………………………………………………….……iv 1 INTORODUCTION……………………..…………………………………………….1 2 LITERATURE REVIEW……………………………………………………...…...…8 2. 1 Introduction………………………………………………………………………8 2. 2 Reviewed resources………………………………………………………….…10 2. 2. 1 The literature on AUL itself……………………….………………..……10 2. 2. 2 Esperanto…………………………………………………………………35 2. 2. 2. 1 History of Esperanto…………………………………...…………35 2. 2. 2. 2 The literature on Esperanto……………………………………….40 2. 2. 3 English…………………………………………...…………...……….…46 2. 2. 3. 1 Positive views…………………………………………………….47 2. 2. 3. 2 Mixed views………………………………………………………53 2. 2. 3. 3 Negative views……………………………………………………60 2. 2. 4 Language Policy and Planning ……..…………………….………...……82 3 SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS……………………………………...……….……105 3. 1 Introduction……………………………………………………………………105 3. 2 The research participants…………………………………………...…………108 3. 3 Re-examining the literature……………………………………………………110 3. 3. 1 Answers to the first research question………………………………….111 3. 3. 2 Answers to the second research question…………………………….…125 3. 3. 2. 1 Answers from the literature on AUL………………...…………...…..….126 3. 3. 2. 2 Answers from the literature on English…………………………130 3. 3. 2. 3 Answers from the literature on Esperanto………………………131 3. 3. 2. 4 Answers from the literature on Language Policy and Planning...134 3. 3. 2. 4. 1 A tentative model for the language planning of an AUL…135 1) Status planning……………………………………………….135 2) Corpus planning………………………………………………144 iv 3) Education planning……………..…………………………….145 3. 4 Interviews……………………………………………………………………..154 3. 4. 1 The first set of interviews…………………………...…………………156 3. 4. 2 The second set of interviews (follow-up questions)………..………….174 4 CONCLUSION………………………………………………………..…………….187 4. 1 Concluding remarks………………………………………...…………………187 4. 2 Limitations of the study and directions for future research………...…………198 References………………………………………………………………………………203 Appendix A: The Bahá’í perspective on an AUL.…………………………………...…210 Appendix B: The first set of interviews……….. ……………………...…………….…220 Appendix C: The second set of interviews (follow-up questions)...…………………....221 v Chapter 1: Introduction We live in an era in which societies are not any longer isolated (De Swaan, 2001). Although “intercultural contacts are as old as humanity itself”, in the last two or three decades they have extended and increased to such an extent that we cannot imagine the world without these social, economic, and political interconnections (Hofstede, 2001, p. 423). And there is an increasing need and desire to be part of this network of interconnection and to be a member of the global community whether as an individual or as a collective, although this membership has a more material and economic aspect to it than a moral or spiritual one. As Tomlinson (1999) puts it, local life is increasingly tied up with “global structures, processes and events” in order to be part of the global economy (p. 25). In the last few decades we have witnessed the fact that the diverse range of human affairs has gained a global aspect so that different social, economic, and political issues tied to human life are not any longer individual or even national issues but global matters that need to be discussed in the global arenas. And of course technology and material advances, in particular communication technologies, have had a tremendous role in contributing and giving rise to global interconnection, and also in facilitating it in terms of providing both live and virtual communication in which geographical and political boundaries are blurred and further communication with people at the other side of the world is not any longer a dream. As Dunn (1995) puts it, “the technologies have brought once remote regions of the world into on-going daily contact, in effect dramatically contracting old conceptions of time and distance” (p. xi) so that politically defined geographical boundaries are becoming less important. 1 But the question is how can we actually participate in those interconnections? What can be the best means or tools to be able to go beyond our speech community and fulfill different communicative purposes both as an individual and as a collective with other individuals or collectives? The fact is that these “relations of power, trade, migration and cultural exchange” in which “all human groups on the globe engage”, or at least try to engage, are “necessarily embedded in language,” which is the most significant and frequently used means of communication among human beings (De Swaan, 2001, p. 177). But how many languages should or could we learn to fulfill our different communicative purposes? Can we learn all the world languages or at least those different languages that we need? Or should we spend an enormous amount of time and energy on transplanting information into almost 6912 languages in the world as last estimated in 2005 by Ethnologue, which is an encyclopedic reference work cataloging all of the world’s living languages? Even if we could, that would be very difficult and would imply investing a large amount of human and financial resources. Another option that has been suggested by many philosophers and linguists from the seventeenth century (e.g., Descartes 1629 and Montesquieu, 1728 as cited in Brown, 1991) to the present (e.g., Sapir, 1925; Lauwerys, 1946; Pei, 1968; Phillipson, 1992; Eco, 1995; Harrison, 2000; Meyjes, 2006) is that an Auxiliary Universal Language (AUL) could be adopted to solve the problem of language barriers, a common language that everyone in the world could learn as auxiliary or secondary to his or her mother tongue to be able to communicate with speakers of other languages. In fact, as argued in the literature, adoption of an AUL would be the solution to the problem of the language barrier facing every human being, in particular at the present time in human history. 2 But the question is what the features of an AUL are. Do we already have an AUL that has those features? If not, should we get one? And how can we do it? It was these concerns that initially encouraged me to dedicate my master’s thesis to exploring the idea of an AUL in which I made an attempt to answer two research questions: 1) what is an AUL and what is its main purpose? 2) What is the best possible method to adopt an AUL and implement it globally? And of course I have to mention that as a Bahá’í individual, long before doing my master’s thesis on exploring the idea of an AUL I read about the idea of an AUL as emphasized in The Kitab-i Aqdas, which is the holy book in the Bahá’í Faith, and other Bahá’í writings. And in fact, it was the Bahá’í writings on the idea of an AUL that first inspired me to begin this study.
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