Total linguistic multiplicity, not selective loyalty, justifies defending all languages
Evidence
The floodtide of extinction, unstoppable in its power of contagion, ,vill win out. It will leave a residue that is not one victorious language, or several, but one or more desolate codes that will take a long time to reconstitute the organic and unpredictable liveliness of a language. Linguistic multiplicity protects ways of speaking, from the most extensive to the most fragile. It is in the name of this total multiplicity and in function of it, rather than of any selective pseudo-solidarities, that each language must be defended. — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 503
Categorization
- XREF: The ‘total multiplicity’ defense of languages parallels Glissant’s overall Creolization argument against bounded particularism, useful for the strategic essentialism reading. — connects to: Defending any language requires defending all linguistic multiplicity. — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 503; A language stays rich only through risking contact with other cultures — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 578; One defends a threatened language for world diversity, not only personal identity. — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 514 (+3 more)
Broader Connections
- Defending any language requires defending all linguistic multiplicity.
#corroborates(0.95) — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 503 - One defends a threatened language for world diversity, not only personal identity.
#corroborates(0.80) — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 514 - Language is a stratified multiplicity reflecting historico-social differences, not a unitary thing
#expands(0.80) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1250 - A language stays rich only through risking contact with other cultures
#expands(0.75) — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 578 - Language-identity links are ideological, not natural
#qualifies(0.75) — Mary Bucholtz and Kira Hall, Identity and Interaction, 50 - Language hierarchy alone does not create inferiority; colonization does
#expands(0.72)