No abstract

Elite Perceptions of the Poor: Reflections for a Comparative Research Proiect AE T his ~rticlc p~esents the ~hcorctica.l foundations for an ()ngoin~ resc:lrl~h proJect on elites and theIr perceptIons of poverty and poor people within their own societies. We arc addressing this topic for t,\\'o reasons. First, virtually nothing is known about such perceptions in nlOS( so,ictics, cspl-ci,llly in less developed countries where poverty is nlost serious and where our work is mainly focused. Second, the \vay in which clites pen:eivc and define poverty can powerfully affect social policy and the quality of life of the poor.

Modern Western languages were shaped in the course of European state formation. A number of languages each came to be closely associated with a national state and as a result became particularly "robust." This prior development, the theme of the first section of this paper, very much shapes the dynamics of the ongoing rivalry between national languages in the contemporary European context. Moreover, the process of language unification at the national level contributes to an understanding of the process of language rivalry and accommodation now proceeding at the subcontinental level, which forms the subject of the second section. There, a measure is presented of the communication potential of a language or repertory of languages for a speaker in the system: its Q -value. People will add to their repertoire the language that most increases this Q -value. The historical and analytic strands are combined in a third section, which uses data from censuses and questionnaire research to assess the competitive relations between the larger European languages and to adumbrate which language will come to predominate. Language Unification at the National Level'Since antiquity, Latin has served as the connecting language in Europe; in all the language groups of Christendom there were some, usually clergyman, who could speak it and thus maintain connections with other language groups. The connecting web was tenuous, the Latin speakers few in number, but the web held together until the nineteenth century in the domain of religion and learning. Before that, by the eighteenth century, however, French had emerged as an alternative connecting language, more geared towards worldly ends, spoken at the European courts, by diplomats, and by men of taste and learning all over the continent.

This first of two installments, the second of which will appear in LPLP 22/2, opens with a section providing a broad sketch of the evolving world language system. The next section introduces an index for the communication potential (Q-value) of languages within this constellation. The third section identifies languages as collective goods that also display "external network effects", charac teristics they share with standards and non-excludable communication networks: "hypercollective goods". The collective cultural capital of a language group consists of the totality of accumulated texts accessible in the language and carries the same hypercollective properties.

It is a recurrent theme in sociolinguistics that besides fully documenting endangered languages, it is important to ensure somehow that they will continue to be used. The basic trope is that of ‘language death’, analogous to the extinction of species. But the analogy fails: languages do not die, although their users may abandon them, usually in favour of a more widely spoken language. Nor does linguistic diversity increase cultural diversity — or the equal treatment of language groups mitigate inequality between and within groups. In addition, promoting minority, local and immigrant languages, which are all too often ill-equipped for modern life, actually strengthens the position of the dominant language as the only common language of communication: the more languages are spoken, the sooner English will take over. This process can be seen at work both in post-Apartheid South Africa and in the European Union as it undergoes enlargement.