The term ‘preventive linguistics’ has been used by David Crystal in his book Language Death (2000; p. 93). The term ‘Perilinguistics’ (coming from ‘peril’) has also been proposed by another linguist for the same subject The idea itself is unheard of and, to my knowledge, such a course has never been taught even in a rudimentary form in Pakistan. So, to begin with, what does the term mean? To answer this question let us look at a number of facts which have been presented by linguists in the form of scholarly papers, books and theses.
The issue is that the languages of the world are dying. There are about 6,000 to 7,000 languages at the moment but many are dying. And how do languages die? When their speakers die or shift to other languages. Daniel Nettle and Suzanne Romaine’s book Vanishing Voices (2000) gives touching and sobering details of the last speakers of some languages. For instance, Ned Maddrell died in 1974 and with him Manx, an ancient tongue, ceased to be a living language. Australian languages are dying at the rate of one or more every year. In America there were more than 300 languages when Columbus arrived but only 175 survive today---and most are just museum relics.
Now those who think this is a welcome development and that English, the language of globalization, should fill in the vacuum need not read this article any further. However, those who feel that the death of a language is the death of a culture, a world view, local knowledge and, therefore, an irreparable loss of human diversity may continue reading.
About the first view, which has been identified as ‘linguistic imperialism’, one has little to say except that it appeals to those who hate diversity, who look at civilization only in pecuniary terms (it costs less to deal in one language) and who are sure that uniformity is a good thing. The second view has been defended from various points of view. First, there is the argument that each human group has the right to its way of life and this is mediated through language. Second, when a group of humans shifts to another language it loses its identity becoming an inferior clone of the dominant group whose language it adopts. Third, when a language disappears then certain kinds of human thoughts, values, ideas and knowledge also disappears. Fourth, some languages have names of plants, animals and other resources which are lost when the language is lost. This, argue Nettle and Romaine, connects linguistic diversity with biodiversity. Their book argues that when we kill the world’s languages we unwittingly also kill the world’s diverse flora and fauna---and this, in a word, is an unmitigated environmental disaster. Lastly, there is the argument that the vast corpus of the world’s languages provide us with data which help us understand how the mind itself functions, how reality is categorized and constructed and how human languages function. All these are weighty arguments for those who believe in them.
Then there is the debate as to why languages die. The linguistic Tove Skutnab-Kangas in a seminal study on Linguistic Diversity (2000) calls English the ‘Killer language’. She argues against globalization which, she asserts, is carried out in English. In short, the face of the world is being ‘Mac Donaldized’ and this entails it being, parri passu, Anglicized. Thus, if we were to stop the triumphant march of English we could reverse this world wide Anglicization.
Now we are in a position to understand what Crystal means by ‘preventive linguistics’. It is that branch of linguistics which provides information about the world’s endangered languages and enables linguists and policy makers to take steps to preserve them or even to revitalize them. This means, to begin with, making people conscious of the problem. Then, if possible, the language(s) can be taught in schools, given coverage in the media and jobs may be provided in them. If nothing is possible their grammar, sound system, vocabulary and folk tales may be recorded in different forms. This will preserve the memory of the language and allow linguists to have access to data which will help them understand the intricacies of human language as such. It may even allow the language to be revitalized at some future date.
Are we doing anything of this kind in Pakistan? No we are not. Most of the linguistic courses in Pakistani universities are in the departments of English. They do teach an odd course on phonetics and phonology (about sounds and the sound system), sociolinguistics (language in society) and grammar etc but their teaching draws on English and on European linguists for examples. Most of them work on the teaching of English anyway. Thus, Pakistani languages are outside their purview. Indeed, I have discovered that the chart I have presented in my book Language, Ideology and Power (Oxford UP, 2002) giving a list of some fifty (plus) Pakistani languages comes as a great surprise to most readers. They all assume that we have about five languages or so.
There are, however, local language activists who have written word lists and primers of Pakistani languages. Most of these people, however, are not trained in modern linguistics. They do not have resources either. Thus, their pamphlets and books are curiosities which linguists use as data but university or government departments remain indifferent to them.
The only people who have recorded Pakistan’s minor language are European linguists. I have written in detail about their work in my previous books [see Language, Education and Culture OUP, 1999 and Language and Politics in Pakistan (1996)] but I will mention the Summer Institute of Linguistics which has done more work than any person or institution since George Grierson to record the languages of Pakistan. Even now Dr. Johann Baart, an eminent linguist from the SIL, is working to preserve Kundal Shahi with Khwaja Abdur Rahman. This language is spoken in Neelam Valley, Azad Kashmir, and would have died completely had Khwaja Rahman not noticed it and asked Baart to help him record it. Similarly Rozi Khan Burki is recording Ormuri, again with the help of Baart. There are other small languages, such as Domaaki spoken in Mominabad (Hunza); Ushojo (Chail Valley of Swat); the smaller languages of Chitral etc. which are in need of preservation but Pakistani linguists are not aware of this.
What change in teaching linguistics should be made to make linguists conscious of the threat to our languages? First, linguistics should be established as an autonomous discipline in its own right and not merely as an offshoot of English (or Urdu) studies. Second, one compulsory course should be on language policy. Third, students should be encouraged to write a grammar or record the sounds of minor languages for their M. Phil or Ph. D degrees. Above all, ‘preventive linguistics’ should be a compulsory course too. There are enough books, journal articles and theses to offer a course in this subject and it is essential to create awareness of language rights, the dangers of globalization and the consequences of subtractive multilingualism (i.e learning other languages at the cost of one’s own).
Students and people in general in Pakistan must become aware that we in this country have a language policy which creates contempt for our mother tongues. The favoured language is English. This creates aliens who have contempt for all Pakistani languages including Urdu. The next favoured language is Urdu which has been resisted by the language activists of Sindhi, Pashto, Balochi and Brahvi but which is taught in schools at the expense of the mother tongues (except Sindhi). This makes most children unable to write letters in their mother tongues. They have to write in Urdu. Moreover, the Punjabi middle class has developed shame for their own mother tongue and have almost given it up in polite company. This is because the market conditions are such, and above all the pattern of prestige-distribution is such, that people are forced to shift to the languages of power and prestige (English and Urdu). People become subtractive multilinguals and not additive ones. They lose their identity; their inheritance; their world view; their culture and become clones of an alien people. This must be reversed and one way of doing so would be to start teaching ‘preventive linguistics’. Such teaching will create a pressure group which will change other language policies too. Let us save our heritage before it is too late!