Needing to Have a Voice: Linguistic Grouping in the Digital Networked Environment 3 Can Be Asked Again About Internet Technologies

ISD WORKING PAPERS IN NEW DIPLOMACY Norms & Evolving Emerging Standards Environments Actors Needing to Have A Voice: Linguistic Grouping in the university of foreign service georgetown school edmund a walsh Digital Networked Environment HAN-TENG LIAO | JULY 2011 INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF DIPLOMACY “[T]here isn’t an economic internet and a social internet and The contours of diplomatic a political internet; there’s just the Internet,” U.S. Secretary of engagement are changing rap- State Hillary Clinton said about the U.S.’s Internet freedom idly, as are the environments agenda, claiming that there should not be “walls that divide the in which diplomacy is crafted, Internet.” honed, and practiced. New Indeed, as the Internet is embedded in all aspects of every- media have changed the pace day life, it is difficult for states to contain Internet and Internet- and content of political aware- enabled activities in one or a few selected domains. However, ness and provided new tools what really divides the Internet may not be “walls” erected by for diplomacy. governments that do not like the U.S.’s Internet freedom agen- Every global issue now tests da but the linguistic barriers that have been used to draw the the assumptions and practices boundaries in which voices can be articulated, heard, and ex- of traditional diplomacy. Non- changed. Though the Internet may be global and universal in its state actors—whether benign reach, any Internet user can only access certain segments of the or malign, constructive or dis- Internet that are determined by his or her linguistic capacity. ruptive—now play increasing- There may still be a Chinese-language Internet and an Urdu- ly important roles in the con- language Internet. duct of international politics The link between language and media is not new. Consider and lead us to think differently the following quotes regarding the role of languages, first in the about global development, print media two hundred years ago and second in social media conflict, and reconciliation. today: These issues, conditions, and actors are helping to re- These [mechanically reproduced] print-languages laid the bases for na- fine, and perhaps redefine, tional consciousnesses. These fellow-readers . formed . the em- what diplomacy means, how bryo of the nationally imagined community. Second, print-capitalism it is conducted, and how we gave a new fixity to language. Third, print-capitalism created languag- examine the new terrain of es-of-power.1 diplomacy. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities Han-Teng Liao was the Yahoo! Fellow in Residence (2010–2011) at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy. 2 Social media is all about connections. There’s no stronger connection than literally speaking the same language.2 Quote from a digital marketing specialist Benedict Anderson argues that print technologies, print- languages, and print-capitalism have laid “the bases for national consciousnesses”3 when he examines the creation and global spread of nationalism from the late eighteenth century onwards. When the world’s media content and technologies converge in the digital networked environment,4 what are the shaping roles of languages? If Anderson is right that “capitalism and print created monoglot mass reading publics,”5 what kind of language users have the Internet technologies created? One does not have to agree that speaking the same language is the strongest connection for users of social media in order to appreciate the important role that language may play in the way Internet users are grouped, which is the subject of this essay. How has the role of languages shaped and influenced the grouping of Internet users? This paper begins by discussing an often-overlooked point in understanding the digital and networked environment: Be- fore one has a voice, one has to speak a language of some kind. To be heard, one has to speak the language of an audience. Thus, the idea of providing more information and faster communication is not that simple and straightforward for all the languages in the world. Though the general trend of digital and computer network development is to become faster and bigger in content production and circulation, not all languages suffer from the problem of overabundance or information overload as English does. At a minimum, without proper standards and technologies for encoding and decoding human-readable texts in digital codes, a language can never enjoy the volume and speed that digital technologies can provide. “All human-readable text has a language,” 6 but not all languages are ready and available for the latest information, communication, and telecommunication (ICT) technologies. In other words, what are the dynamics of linguistic grouping in the digital networked environment? A series of questions Needing to Have a Voice: Linguistic Grouping in the Digital Networked Environment 3 can be asked again about Internet technologies. First, what kind of “digit-coded languages” are mechanically reproduced that may reconfigure the bases for a national (or other kind of) isd working papers in new dipomacy isd working consciousness? Under this overarching question, three sub- questions can be raised following Anderson’s formulation in the opening quote: (1) In the digital networked environment, what kinds of fellow-readers are formed, and what are their implications for the idea of an imagined community? (2) Are languages more fixed or fluid? (3) What kind of languages-of- power are reshaped or created? The above questions, centering on the idea of having a voice online, are fundamental for the future of Internet. If properly answered, the questions have implications for linguistic human rights online and ICT for development. It all comes down to the double meaning of the term “voice.” On one hand, a voice is human utterance articulated in a certain language. On the other hand, it is about “a right to ex- press a preference or opinion,” which can be traced back to casting votes in a deliberative assembly.7 Thus, the movement of linguistic human rights, or language human rights, which emerged mainly in the 1980s mostly in Europe, should be re- garded as an effort to remedy the assumption that monolinguis- tic speech is ideal for the national or public sphere.8 The expan- sion of the human rights movement from a political and civic rights movement to the promulgation of economic, social, and cultural rights thus has linguistic components in international documents. These include the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the 1996 Universal Declaration of Linguis- tic Rights.9 The idea of multiple voices in multiple languages has also been linked to the provision of universal access to cy- berspace when the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) recommended “the promo- tion and use of multilingualism” in 2003. Since then, UN mem- ber states have been requested to submit a report once every four years on such action taken.10 To implement the multilingual digital networked environment thus embodies two interrelated desires. One is to expand human rights from the political sphere to the economic, social, 4 and cultural domains. Another is to diffuse the Internet technologies to different language users in the world. Needing to have a voice online is thus an endeavor to achieve the double meaning of the term “voice” for a group of language users: their expressions and their languages should be accommodated online. LINGUISTIC INFRASTRUCTURE: NOT JUST DESIGNED FOR ENGLISH “Will the Internet always speak English?” an American linguist asked in 2002, recognizing the fact that the “Internet was basi- cally an American development” spreading across the English- speaking world at a fast speed.11 In 2002, the English-speaking world generated nearly 80 percent of Internet traffic. Quoting then French President Jacques Chirac, the American linguist pointed out why the prevalence of English on the Internet had been seen as a “major risk for humanity” that might eventually lead to linguistic and cultural uniformity. A director of a Rus- sian Internet provider, who noticed the distinction between English-speaking elites and non-English-speakers among Rus- sian Internet users, refuted the idea of an “open” Web as “the ultimate act of intellectual colonialism” because it was not yet “open” enough to Russian language and content.12 These reac- tions reflected the traditional concerns of print-languages or media-languages as the bases both for non-English voices and a national consciousness. Indeed, to have a voice in the digital networked environment requires infrastructure that can mechanically support the language in question. To be “mechanically reproduced” in the digital networked environment, a digital language/writing system must be developed to address issues such as encoding (representing language symbols in computer digit codes), linguistic and orthographic factors, and text processing (input, rendering, ordering, etc.). Take keyboards and keypads as ex- amples of text input: Figure 1 shows the respective layouts of American English, Arabic, and Chinese. Languages other than American English have to cram their language symbols in a way Needing to Have a Voice: Linguistic Grouping in the Digital Networked Environment 5 Figure 1. Selected Keypad and Keyboard Layouts for American English, Arabic, and Chinese isd working papers in new dipomacy isd working similar to cramming English alphabets onto keypads of twelve keys on mobile devices. Users need to be trained to type the language of their choice. Users without proper language support are effectively voiceless or speechless. Some languages may face many more digital difficulties if the symbol and writing system they require is very different from the Latin-alpha- bet-based American English. A succinct historical summary of the last decade of linguistic infrastructure is thus needed to demonstrate how languages can be “mechanically reproduced” for all languages in the 6 world.

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