36 Million language pairs: generative multilingualism in digitally-enabled societies

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05 March 2010This essay is based on a study that explores the relationships among multilingualism, technological change and the generation of novelty. It discusses the development of a dominant paradigm in language governance within digital culture and goes on to introduce the notion of ‘generative multilingualism.’

Generative multilingualism, it is argued, regards it as insufficient to foster the inclusion of most or all languages on the Internet if no adequate regime of intersection amongst those languages is put in place. In order to be sustainable in digital culture, linguistic pluralism not only entails the participation of the world’s 6,000 languages, it requires their mutual interaction. The enormous task linguistic pluralism creates, therefore, is the generatively-enabled interactivity of 36 million language pairs.

Publication typeArticle
Publisher TypeAcademic research centre, APO Member
CoverageAustralia, Worldwide
Permanent URLhttp://apo.org.au/node/20591
Views1133

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