Re: The Dollar and the American Language

[Doyle Saylor <djsaylor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Greetings Economists,
The issue of the use of English as Yoshie puts it is not quite as I see it.
For example Yoshie says,

Yoshie,
As the dollar goes south, however, will fewer people in the world be
studying American English, and will Americans be finally compelled to
learn a foreign language or two?)

Doyle,
What this brings up is not so much how many people speak English, but
translation from one language to another.  Over all I like the concept of
languaculture (see Michael Agar as an example, "Language Shock,
Understanding the Culture of Conversation, Perennial, 1994) where we aren't
talking about the chauvinism of I speak English and you don't, but a
recognition of the work process that goes into building a culture.

The issue then is not so much there will be 2 billion English speakers but
how a single culture is formed.  In that case there is hardly any unity to
English speakers.  Large languages accumulate over time a great wealth of
sharable experiences via the language.  But it is also clear that
translating from one language to another language that the context and work
of the moment has to be included.  The culture as well as the language has
to be shared and that's the rub in saying 2 billion people speak English.

We can look at this in these terms as well;

"The New Unconscious", Oxford Press, Edited by Hassin, Uleman, Bargh, 2004,
pages 82 through 83,

..."Our senses can handle about 11 million bits per second (Zimmerman 1989;
see Norretranders, 1998, for a detailed analysis).  This whopping number is
largely the result of our sophisticated visual system, which can handle
about 10 million bits per second.  The processing capacity of consciousness
pales in comparison.  The exact number of bits consciousness can process
depends on the task.  When we read silently, we process about maximum of 45
bits per second (a few words); when we read aloud, it drops to 30.  When we
calculate (e.g., when we multiply two numbers), we can handle only 12 bits
per second.  Compared to our total capacity, these numbers are incredibly
small."

Doyle,
What I am pointing out is if we manufacture say photographs in a movie we
are vastly out producing what English can do in a given time frame.  We can
not so much say that English will expand but that the ability to communicate
in any given instant will expand during the coming century outstripping
spoken language as presently practiced.  I'm not sure we would call that
expansion English.  Partly because the problem of cultural unification that
we might see coming can't be well handled by a given traditional language
due to the labor restrictions language imposes we might anticipate that a
given language would have added in the given moment additional files mainly
visual, but tactile, and audio as well to better unify human activity.
Taking it as a context issue, it is how we use our bodies in space that
issues language.  We want to be able then to more closely match that context
to communication.
thanks,
Doyle Saylor