June 8: Creators and destroyers of languages: Adventures in language identification

The UND Summer Institute of Learning colloquia series will feature “Creators and destroyers of languages: Adventures in language identification with Karl Anderbeck presenting at 8 p.m. June 8 in Gamble Hall Room 3.

Abstract
Contrary to popular opinion, languages do not exist. That is, languages are not entities you can discover in the physical world. ‘Languages’ are, instead, purely cultural creations, “as cultural as a teacup.” They can be created and destroyed without changing anything about how people actually speak, just by changing how we (collectively) think.

Observers of our world spend large amounts of energy describing and classifying cultural artifacts. And arguing about others’ descriptions and classifications! These activities are not a waste of time, but we must remember that everyone brings a model to this process, and not everyone shares the same model. Helpfully, however, different models can teach us different things if we are aware of them.

This presentation reviews different models for identifying ‘languages’ and how their various applications lead to different conclusions. A fundamental distinction is made between models based on linguistic performance (how people speak) and those based on linguistic representation (how people conceive of how they or others speak). A number of examples from Asia are presented which illustrate both the results of different models, and how languages there have been ‘created’ and ‘destroyed’.