Language and social development in the Pacific Area

College

Br. Andrew Gonzalez FSC College of Education

Department/Unit

Dept of English and Applied Linguistics

Document Type

Article

Source Title

Philippine Journal of Linguistics

Volume

10

Issue

1&2

First Page

21

Last Page

44

Publication Date

1979

Abstract

A typology of Pacific countries is attempted based on economic systems and degree of socioeconomic development using various indicators (per capita income, literacy, life span). Dimensions of language are then grafted onto these grids and an attempt is made to qualitatively correlate socioeconomic development with various manifestations of language development. It is possible to obtain an index of national language development by rating a country on each of seven scales based on status of minority languages, linguistic homogeneity, communicative efficiency within the country, efficiency of the language of education, mastery of the language of government and trade, competence in a language of wider communication for international relations, and degree of development of the national language. What emerges from the analysis is that, although some of the scaled factors correlate with others or with socioeconomic indicators, socioeconomic development on the whole has low correlation with national language development.

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Disciplines

Language and Literacy Education

Keywords

Language and languages—Economic aspects—Pacific Area; Sociolinguistics—Pacific Area

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