A Sociological Study of the impact of globalization on the decrease of language diversity

Subject Areas : sociology

Narmineh Moeinian ¹

1 - . گروه علوم اجتماعی، واحد تبریز، دانشگاه آزاد اسلامی، تبریز- ایران. E- mail: [e-mail]

Received: 2018-02-05 Accepted : 2018-02-05 Published : 2018-01-21

Keywords: Globalization, diversity of languages, Global cultural approach, language adequacy,

Abstract :

One of the main issues that threaten the life of languages is economic,social and political processes that fits in globalization concept. Today,there are 5000 to 7000 languages all over the world, but the linguistspredict that 90% of these languages will extinct and be forgotten in the nextcentury. Besides some positive features of globalization, there are somenegative aspects such as increasing rates of poverty and inequality andreducing rate of cultural and linguistic diversity. Using the documentarymethod and collecting data, the aim of this study is to assess this point that,what is the globalization? What are its aspects? How does it lead to the lossof local languages and finally extinction of linguistic diversity? Theseviews can be analyzed in the light of global culture and imperialism. Thesetheories refer to this point that in the globalization of production and theeconomy, meanings, concepts, fashion and values will be sent to localcommunities along with goods. Therefore, the local people prefer theuniversal English language to their local language and teach it to theirchildren because they do want to reach the civilization level. This will leadto weakness and eventually the death of the local language. Now, the criticsof globalization and the linguists like Sachs believe that, assimilation isgoing to be replaced with understanding the diversity of culture andlanguage.