Globalization and the Myth of Killer Languages : What ’ s Really Going on ?

This paper is about some misgivings I harbor over some recent linguistics publications on language endangerment, i.e., the process whereby a language loses grounds to another either because it is spoken by fewer and fewer speakers and/or because it is heavily influenced by the competitor, which its speakers seem to command or like better. The targets of my criticisms include Crystal (2000, 2004), Dalby (2002), Nettle/Romaine (2000), Maffi (2001), Phillipson (2003), and Skutnabb-Kangas (2000), to whom I will often refer collectively, as they basically share the same positions, though there are minor differences in the specific ways they state them. Oversimplifying reality, they have generally reduced globalization to a process that makes the world more and more uniform by the world-wide diffusion of intellectual, linguistic, military, technological, and other cultural products associated with hegemonic regimes such as the USA, the United Kingdom, and Australia. In other words, they equate globalization with what would be the westernization of the world and talk about indigenous languages as if indigenity were no longer a relative notion and such languages were to be found only in the Americas, Asia, and Australia (Mufwene 2002). Capitalizing on the increasing attestations of Hollywood movies and McDonald restaurants around the world, they speak of McDonaldization and Americanization as if these phenomena either instantiated or produced globalization, whereas they should instead be treated as its (by-)products.