Language and social development in the Pacific Area

• Main Author: Gonzalez, Andrew, Brother, FSC
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 1979
• Subjects: Language and languages—Economic aspects—Pacific Area; Sociolinguistics—Pacific Area; Language and Literacy Education
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/faculty_research/4993
• Institution: De La Salle University

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.