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English as the universal language of science: opportunities and challenges

English is now used almost exclusively as the language of science. The adoption of a de facto universal language of science has had an extraordinary effect on scientific communication: by learning a single language, scientists around the world gain access to the vast scientific literature and can communicate with other scientists anywhere in the world. However, the use of English as the universal scientific language creates distinct challenges for those who are not native speakers of English. In this editorial, we discuss how researchers, manuscript reviewers, and journal editors can help minimize these challenges, thereby leveling the playing field and fostering international scientific communication.

It is estimated that less than 15% of the world's population speaks English, with just 5% being native speakers ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language ). This extraordinary imbalance emphasizes the importance of recognizing and alleviating the difficulties faced by nonnative speakers of English if we are to have a truly global community of scientists. For scientists whose first language is not English, writing manuscripts and grants, preparing oral presentations, and communicating directly with other scientists in English is much more challenging than it is for native speakers of English. Communicating subtle nuances, which can be done easily in one's native tongue, becomes difficult or impossible. A common complaint of nonnative speakers of English is that manuscript reviewers often focus on criticizing their English, rather than looking beyond the language to evaluate the scientific results and logic of a manuscript. This makes it difficult for their manuscripts to get a fair review and, ultimately, to be accepted for publication.

We believe that the communications advantage realized by native speakers of English obligates them to acknowledge and to help alleviate the extra challenges faced by their fellow scientists from non-English-speaking countries. Native speakers of English should offer understanding, patience, and assistance when reviewing or editing manuscripts of nonnative speakers of English. At the same time, nonnative speakers of English must endeavor to produce manuscripts that are clearly written. We offer the following guidelines for writing and evaluating manuscripts in the context of the international community of scientists:

• Nonnative speakers of English can write effective manuscripts, despite errors of grammar, syntax, and usage, if the manuscripts are clear, simple, logical, and concise. (We note that native speakers of English sometimes write manuscripts exhibiting good grammar, yet filled with muddled and confusing logic.)
• When possible, reviewers and editors of manuscripts should look beyond errors in grammar, syntax, and usage, and evaluate the science.
• It is inappropriate to reject or harshly criticize manuscripts from nonnative speakers of English based on errors of grammar, syntax, or usage alone. If there are language errors, reviewers and editors should provide constructive criticism, pointing out examples of passages that are unclear and suggesting improvements. Reviewers and editors may also suggest that authors seek the assistance of expert English speakers or professional editing services in preparing revised versions of manuscripts. And finally, all involved should bear in mind that most journals employ copyeditors, whose job it is to correct any lingering errors in grammar, syntax, and usage before final publication of an article.
• Nonnative speakers of English must be aware that reviewers, editors, and journal staff do not have the time or resources to extensively edit manuscripts for language and that reviewers and editors must be able to understand what is being reported. Thus, it is essential that nonnative speakers of English recognize that their ability to participate in the international scientific enterprise is directly related to their ability to produce manuscripts in English that are clear, simple, logical, and concise.

The fact that English is the de facto global language of science is not likely to change anytime soon. Optimizing communication among members of the international community of scientists, and thus advancing scientific progress, depends on elimination of obstacles faced by nonnative speakers of the English language. This ideal can best be achieved when all members of the scientific community work together.

Acknowledgments

This editorial was inspired by correspondence with Victor Norris of the Université de Rouen, France. We thank Yi Zuo, Karsten Weis, and Laurent Blanchoin for comments on the manuscript and Mark Leader for his excellent edits.

DOI: 10.1091/mbc.E12-02-0108

The logics of a universal language

• Original Article
• Published: 15 February 2024
• Volume 3 , article number  12 , ( 2024 )

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• Eduardo Alejandro Barrio   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4819-2841 1 &
• Edson Bezerra   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0865-5197 1  

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Semantic paradoxes pose a real threat to logics that attempt to be capable of expressing their own semantic concepts. Particularly, Curry paradoxes seem to show that many solutions must change our intuitive concepts of truth or validity or impose limits on certain inferences that are intuitively valid. In this way, the logic of a universal language would have serious problems. In this paper, we explore a different solution that tries to avoid both limitations as much as possible. Thus, we argue that it is possible to capture the naive concepts of truth and validity without losing any of the valid inferences of classical logic. This approach is called the Buenos Aires plan. We present the logic of truth and validity, \(\mathsf {STTV}_{\omega }\) based on the hierarchy of logics \(\textsf{ST}_{\omega }\) , whose validity predicate has the same semantic conditions as the material conditional. We argue that \(\mathsf {STTV}_{\omega }\) is capable of blocking the problematic results while keeping the deductive power of classical logic as much as possible and offering an adequate semantic theory. On the other hand, one could object that it is not possible to reason with \(\mathsf {STTV}_{\omega }\) because it is not closed under its logical principles. We respond to this objection and argue that the local characterization of validity shows how to make inferences using the logic \(\textsf{ST}_{\omega }\) .

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Paradoxicality Without Paradox

The Innocence of Truth in Semantic Paradox

This is not an instance of (e).

In what follows, we will not typically mind the distinction between use and mention when talking about sentences of formal languages. This should not hinder comprehension, and it ensures that the text is readable.

Among the upholders of VTP (and its variants), we refer the reader to Kreisel ( 1967 ); Smith ( 2011 ); Ketland ( 2012 ); Kennedy and Väänänen ( 2017 ), and Halbach ( 2020 ).

We refer the reader to Akiba ( 1996 ) and Smith ( 2011 ) for objections agains Field’s view about primitive validity.

In Field ( 1991 , 2008 ), the reader finds those arguments fully developed.

From a proof-theoretical perspective, these operational solutions restrict the operational rules (i.e., inference rules) of the logical connectives (see Beall and Murzi ( 2013 )).

The reader may find several versions of the derivation of validity paradox in the literature. We invite the reader to find some of these formulations in Beall and Murzi ( 2013 ); Wansing and Priest ( 2015 ).

For more details about these consequence relations, see Chemla et al. ( 2017 ).

A different approach to metainferential validity is the notion of global validity which is the preservation of validity from a metainference to another. Teijeiro ( 2021 ) shows that both notions are equivalent under some circumstances.

In what concerns the adoption of weak self-referential procedures, Pailos ( 2020b ) proposes a validity theory based on the logic of paradox \(\textsf{LP}\) (Asenjo, 1966 ; Priest, 1979 ) The theory \(\textsf{LPTV}\) possesses both a conditional that invalidates MP and a weak self-referential procedure that blocks the Curry Paradox. However, as Rosenblatt ( 2021 ) argues, adopting such a procedure is ad hoc because there is no clear justification of why it is necessary to weaken the self-referential procedures. Field ( 2017 ) proposes to drop the rule (VD \(^{\prime }\) ) because it contradicts Gödel’s Second Incompleteness Theorem (SIT), because the inference \(\top , Val(\langle \top \rangle , \langle \psi \rangle ) \Rightarrow \psi \) reflects a form of reflection principle. We think, however, that the concept expressed by Val is considerably different from any arithmetically definable provability predicate. SIT concerns formal arithmetic systems that extend first-order logic, whereas Val could be interpreted in a more general way. That is, it is possible to consistently extend \(\textsf{PA}\) and \(\textsf{Q}\) with a probability predicate in the object language, satisfying the Löb derivability conditions (Smoryński, 1977 ). In contrast, extending these theories with a validity predicate without making the resulting theory inconsistent is impossible. For these reasons, we argue that Pr and Val are significantly different predicates, even though they require expressively strong background theories. According to Myhill ( 1960 ), Val could be taken to interpret an idealized concept of mathematical provability, which our current mathematical theories cannot capture.

Priest ( 2006 ) himself recognizes the need for a conditional for \(\textsf{LP}\) that validates MP. Concerning \(\mathsf {K}_{3}\) , it is well-known that this logic has no tautologies.

As one of the referees pointed to us, the requirement of classicality can be legitimately challenged. For example, one may want to have a logic that is alternative to classical logic. For example, a non-classical logician (paraconsistentist (Priest, 2006 ) relevantist (Brady, 2005 ), and so on) may want to have a semantic theory that really challenges classical logic. Here, we follow the maxim “minimal mutilation” of classical logic (Hjortland, 2021 ), but we recognize that it is an open discussion. We refer the reader to Bacon ( 2013 ) for this discussion.

One of the referees observed that the validity predicate is a natural notion for metainferences. Indeed, it internalizes this metatheoretical notion into the object language of \(\textsf{ST}_{\omega }\) . On the other hand, he/she also argues that one could proceed by internalizing directly the arrow \(\Rightarrow _{n}\) in the language of \(\textsf{ST}\) . This internalization \(\Rightarrow _{n}\) in the language of the hierarchy was proposed by Ferguson and Ramírez-Cámara ( 2021 ). In their paper, they consider metainferences as primitive objects of the language, where \(\Rightarrow _{n}\) is analyzed in terms of \(\textsf{LP}\) ’s material conditional, also providing a method for converting metainferences into implicative formulas, such as in Definition 3.12 . As one can easily see, our validity predicates \(Val_{n}\) have the same truth condition as \(\textsf{LP}\) conditional, given that \(\textsf{ST}\) and \(\textsf{LP}\) have the same truth tables. The main difference between our approach and Ferguson and Ramírez-Cámara’s is that we consider metainferences as instances, not primitive objects of the language. It would be interesting to compare our results more carefully with Ferguson & Ramírez-Cámara’s results because it is always possible to transform a metainference into a formula. Although such a comparison is interesting, this will be done in further work.

The validity of such a formula is also noted by Barrio et al. ( 2016 ).

Although Barrio et al. argue that over-internalization is bad for a \(\textsf{ST}\) -based approach to the validity predicate, one may argue that it is not necessarily bad because it does not trivialize the validity theory (Ripley, 2021 ).

In their work, they construct tableaux for metainferences where metainferences are analyzed as conditionals \(\Rightarrow \) . Although they do not present a validity predicate in the object language, we can interpret these conditionals as validity statements.

Here one could appeal to a class of models C and define the interpretation of \(Val^{*}\) in a “modal” setting. For example, for every \(M = <D,I> \in C\) : \(I(Val^{*}_{0}(\langle \Gamma \rangle , \langle \Delta \rangle )) = 1\) if there is no model \(M' = <D',I'> \in C\) s.t. \(I'(\bigwedge \Gamma ) = 1\) and \(I'(\bigvee \Delta ) = 0\) ; otherwise, \(I(Val^{*}_{0}(\langle \Gamma \rangle , \langle \Delta \rangle )) = 0\) . The reason that we do not make this movement is that the clause ( \(Val^{*}\) ) is already enough for our argument.

Barrio et al. ( 2016 ) also observe that even \(\textsf{STV}\) struggles with Cut. They show that the sentence \((Val(\langle \top \rangle , \langle \pi \rangle ) \wedge Val(\langle \pi \rangle , \langle \bot \rangle )) \rightarrow (\bot \vee Val(\langle \top \rangle , \langle \bot \rangle ))\) is provable in \(\textsf{STV}\) . This formula says that or Cut is valid or an absurd follows. So, in a more general perspective, the principles (VD) and (VP) extending \(\textsf{ST}\) -based theories validate some form of Cut.

In his work, Hlobil deals with the inferential case. However, to maintain a uniform notation, we introduce the subsctipt in the predicate as well as in the relation \(\Rightarrow\) .

A fixed-point semantics for \(\mathsf {STTV}_{\omega }\) gives a more robust response to the referee’s objection according to which our proposal adds nothing substantial to Pailos ( 2020a )’s proposal.

This objection also appears in Golan ( 2022 ) and Porter ( 2022 ; 2023 )

We said above that the Deduction Theorem holds for the logic \(\textsf{ST}_{\omega }\) . Indeed, this comes from the fact that \(\textsf{ST}_{n}\) and classical logic have the same tautologies and inferences at the metainferential level n , for every n . However, the logics \(\textsf{ST}_{n}\) fail in validating metainferential versions of the Deduction Theorem at the metainferential level \(n+1\) due to the failure of (Meta-MP) at \(n+1\) .

Such an asymmetry also occurs on other many-valued logics that are not characterized by SK-valuations. For example, the three-valued Łukasiewicz logic Ł \(_{3}\) also has this problem. It is a well-known fact that the Deduction Theorem fails for this logic (Malinowski, 2007 ). From a general perspective, the introduction of intermediate values in a logic \(\textsf{L}\) increases its expressive power. So the more values we introduce in a logic, the more we can break some that are present symmetries in classical logic.

As we know, \(\textsf{ST}_{\omega }\) does not have expressive resources in its object language that allow it to distinguish strict assertions from tolerant assertions (see Pailos & Roffe, 2021 ). Such a resource would allow the formulation of reinforced paradoxes that could only be resolved with severe restrictions on self-reference resources, as Pailos ( 2020b ) shows.

As discussed in Section 4 , another option is to give a fixed-point semantics for \(\mathsf {STTV}_{\omega }\) , where the paradoxical sentences will belong neither to the extension nor to the anti-extension of the validity predicate.

As Fjellstad ( 2022 ) argues, since it is possible to represent the hierarchy by means of the material conditional, one could argue that \(\textsf{ST}\) could be used to study its own metatheory.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge Jeremy Wyatt, Joe Ulatowski and Masaharu Mizumoto, the Editors of Truth Without Borders, as well as an anonymous reviewers for detailed and very helpful comments. We also thank all the members of the Buenos Aires Logic Group for their contributions to the content of this paper. This work was supported by PLEXUS, (Grant Agreement no 101086295) a Marie Sklodowska-Curie action funded by the EU under the Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme. Finally, we express our gratitude to CONICET, MinCyT and the University of Buenos Aires.

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Barrio, E.A., Bezerra, E. The logics of a universal language. AJPH 3 , 12 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s44204-024-00140-3

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Education About Asia: Online Archives

In search of a universal language: past, present, and future.

Ever since the Tower of Babel, humans have pursued developing a universal language to use to communicate with more—ideally all— people. However, they have been only marginally successful, as indicated by both the history of a large number of failed efforts and the current situation.

Also, these efforts have their detractors. A language becomes larger when it weakens or replaces another language. This often involves “language genocide” and/or represents “language imperialism.” Attaining a universal language may be this on a grand scale.

In fact, many advocates of expanding the use of their language (and their culture, which is connected) believe it is superior to others. Many do not care if they render another language or languages extinct.

Currently, of the approximately 7,000 languages in the world, many are disappearing. According to National Geographic magazine, one becomes extinct every two weeks. 1 Most experts anticipate half will be gone by the end of the century. Some say 90 percent.

In any case, several centuries ago, Latin, originally the language of Italy, became the universal language of Europe and modern science. It spread and flourished based on the military, commercial, political, and cultural power of the Roman Empire. The Catholic Church preserved its role after the fall of the empire, though its universal status declined, and eventually Latin fell into disuse.

Before and during the seventeenth century, Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, and others began to write in their native languages, not only to give their works broader and more popular appeal, but also to express support for the Protestant Reformation. In addition, they reflected the nationalist sentiments of the time. However, some European scholars still worried that having no single universal language impeded scientific research and progress. With nothing promising in sight, they became multilingual, using English, French, and German. That worked to some degree.

On the other side of the world, in Asia, scientific research was done primarily in a single language: Classical Chinese. At least, it was the universal language in some of that part of the world in its written form; in its spoken form (written Chinese is not phonetic), it was not.

Chinese was also to some degree the language of business and commerce in East Asia, but it waxed in importance only when China prospered and engaged meaningfully in trade. Its usage waned beginning in the fifteenth century with China’s isolationism and eventual decline. That continued until modern times.

In the West, German lost its popularity with World War I and also after the war, when many of its top scientists moved to the US due to the rise of Nazism. Both German and French declined markedly after World War II.

Meanwhile, in the late 1800s, there was an effort to construct a truly universal language: Esperanto. Esperanto was a constructed language intended to be easy to learn and also politically neutral. For some, it would transcend nationality and politics, and contribute to world peace. However, due to the fact that it did not have a territorial, cultural, or economic base, it was not a great success. Today, its number of speakers worldwide is estimated to be only a hundred thousand to two million at most. Little is written in Esperanto.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the British Empire greatly expanded the use of English in commerce and its number of speakers. After World War II, English became the language of science, as well as business, politics, and culture. The dominance of the United States in these three areas ensured that this would remain so. Until the last decade, nearly 98 percent of published scientific articles were written in English, and English was the undisputed language of global trade, culture, travel, and more.

The rise of Asia, in particular China, in the last three-plus decades has enabled Mandarin Chinese to compete as a global language. It has one big advantage: there are three times more native speakers of Mandarin than English (and would-be competitors such as Spanish and Arabic)—noting, of course, that most Chinese also speak a dialect or another version of Chinese, and some don’t speak Mandarin well.

In the last few years, Chinese government officials have justified saying Chinese is a language of science due to China registering more patents and producing more scientific articles than the United States, though their quality is not yet as good. In addition, China is increasing its spending on research and development annually by nearly 20 percent, while the US and Europe barely add 3 percent.

Furthermore, Chinese leaders, including top foreign ministry officials, say emphatically that Chinese should be considered a contender as an important business language. China has been growing economically around four times as fast as the US, has become the world’s largest manufacturer and trading nation, is number one in the world in foreign exchange (while the US has become a huge debtor), and is the largest purveyor of foreign aid and foreign investments.

Adding to the argument for Chinese, China has worked with Japan (the world’s third-largest economy) and South Korea (a major contributor to research in information and communications technology) to standardize the use of Chinese characters in law, commerce, and to some extent science. Meanwhile, a number of countries in Asia and elsewhere have put studying Chinese on a fast track in their universities and business training institutions. English has been demoted in importance.

As a matter of record, the number of people studying Chinese worldwide is double those learning Spanish or German and tenfold those taking Japanese. The government of China announced two years ago that forty million foreigners are studying Chinese; the number has increased exponentially since then. In recent years, China has put a large amount of money and resources into encouraging Chinese-language study—financing Confucian institutes and providing funds for Mandarin Chinese-language teachers in other countries.

Spanish, and recently, Arabic are popular in the US and European colleges and universities. However, they are essentially regional languages and are not used much in the sciences or technology, and they do not compete with English or Chinese for global status.

Hindi is one of the world’s largest languages in number of speakers. Also, India is doing well economically and is making impressive strides in science and technology. But Hindi is not spoken in all of India and is neither spoken nor used very much in other countries.

Which language then, English or Chinese, will come out on top appears to depend on whether or not China’s economic boom falters and/or whether the US (and Europe) can get their economies back on track. For now, there are two contending global languages.

It may be some time before there is a prevailing or universal language. In the interim, knowing both English and Mandarin Chinese makes it possible to communicate with around half the people in the world, which one may say is quite a feat in terms of achieving that elusive international tongue—if one believes that having a universal language is a good idea. ■

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NOTES 1. Russ Rymer, “Vanishing Languages,” National Geographic, July 2012, http://tinyurl. com/73436xn.

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The Hidden Bias of Science’s Universal Language

The vast majority of scientific papers today are published in English. What gets lost when other languages get left out?

Newton’s Principia Mathematica was written in Latin; Einstein’s first influential papers were written in German; Marie Curie’s work was published in French. Yet today, most scientific research around the world is published in a single language, English.

Since the middle of the last century, things have shifted in the global scientific community. English is now so prevalent that in some non-English speaking countries, like Germany, France, and Spain, English-language academic papers outnumber publications in the country’s own language several times over. In the Netherlands, one of the more extreme examples, this ratio is an astonishing 40 to 1.

A 2012 study from the scientific-research publication Research Trends examined articles collected by SCOPUS, the world’s largest database for peer-reviewed journals. To qualify for inclusion in SCOPUS, a journal published in a language other than English must at the very least include English abstracts; of the more than 21,000 articles from 239 countries currently in the database, the study found that 80 percent were written entirely in English. Zeroing in on eight countries that produce a high number of scientific journals, the study also found that the ratio of English to non-English articles in the past few years had increased or remained stable in all but one.

This gulf between English and the other languages means that non-English articles, when they get written at all, may reach a more limited audience. On SCImago Journal Rank —a system that ranks scientific journals by prestige, based on the citations their articles receive elsewhere—all of the top 50 journals are published in English and originate from either the U.S. or the U.K.

In short, scientists who want to produce influential, globally recognized work most likely need to publish in English—which means they’ll also likely have to attend English-language conferences, read English-language papers, and have English-language discussions. In a 2005 case study of Korean scientists living in the U.K., the researcher Kumju Hwang, then at the University of Leeds, wrote: “The reason that [non-native English-speaking scientists] have to use English, at a cost of extra time and effort, is closely related to their continued efforts to be recognized as having internationally compatible quality and to gain the highest possible reputation.”

It wasn’t always this way. As the science historian Michael Gorin explained in Aeon earlier this year, from the 15th through the 17th century, scientists typically conducted their work in two languages: their native tongue when discussing their work in conversation, and Latin in their written work or when corresponding with scientists outside their home country.

“Since Latin was no specific nation’s native tongue, and scholars all across European and Arabic societies could make equal use of it, no one ‘owned’ the language. For these reasons, Latin became a fitting vehicle for claims about universal nature,” Gordin wrote. “But everyone in this conversation was polyglot, choosing the language to suit the audience. When writing to international chemists, Swedes used Latin; when conversing with mining engineers, they opted for Swedish.”

As the scientific revolution progressed through 17th and 18th centuries, Gordin continued, Latin began to fall out of favor as the scientific language of choice:

Galileo Galilei published his discovery of the moons of Jupiter in the Latin Sidereus Nuncius of 1610, but his later major works were in Italian. As he aimed for a more local audience for patronage and support, he switched languages. Newton’s Principia (1687) appeared in Latin, but his Opticks of 1704 was English (Latin translation 1706).

But as this shift made it more difficult for scientists to understand work done outside of their home countries, the scientific community began to slowly consolidate its languages again. By the early 19th century, just three—French, English, and German—accounted for the bulk of scientists’ communication and published research; by the second half of the 20th century, only English remained dominant as the U.S. strengthened its place in the world, and its influence in the global scientific community has continued to increase ever since.

As a consequence, the scientific vocabularies of many languages have failed to keep pace with new developments and discoveries. In many languages, the  words “quark” and “chromosome,” for example, are simply transliterated from English. In a 2007 paper, the University of Melbourne linguist Joe Lo Bianco described the phenomenon of “domain collapse,” or “the progressive deterioration of competence in [a language] in high-level discourses.” In other words, as a language stops adapting to changes in a given field, it can eventually cease to be an effective means of communication in certain contexts altogether.

In many countries, college-level science education is now conducted in English—partially because studying science in English is good preparation for a future scientific career, and partially because the necessary words often don’t exist in any other language. A 2014 report from the University of Oxford found that the use of English as the primary language of education in non-English speaking countries is on the rise, a phenomenon more prevalent in higher education but also increasingly present in primary and secondary schools.

But even with English-language science education around the world, non-native speakers are still often at a disadvantage.

“Processing the content of the lectures in a different language required a big energetic investment, and a whole lot more concentration than I am used to in my own language,” said Monseratt Lopez, a McGill University biophysicist originally from Mexico.

“I was also shy to communicate with researchers, from fear of not understanding quite well what they were saying,” she added. “Reading a research paper would take me a whole day or two as opposed to a couple of hours.”

Sean Perera, a researcher in science communication from the Australian National University, described the current situation this way: “The English language plays a dominant role, one could even call it a hegemony … As a consequence, minimal room or no room at all is allowed to communicators of other languages to participate in science in their own voice—they are compelled to translate their ideas into English.”

In practice, this attitude selects for only a very specific way of looking at the world, one that can make it easy to discount other types of information as nothing more than folklore. But knowledge that isn’t produced via traditional academic research methods can still have scientific value—indigenous tribes in Indonesia , for example, knew from their oral histories how to recognize the signs of an impeding earthquake, enabling them to flee to higher ground before the 2004 tsunami hit. Similarly, the Luritja people of central Australia have passed down an ancient legend of a deadly “fire devil” crashing from the sun to the Earth—which, geologists now believe, describes a meteorite that landed around 4,700 years ago.

“It is all part of a growing recognition that Indigenous knowledge has a lot to offer the scientific community,” the BBC wrote in an article describing the Luritja story. “But there is a problem—indigenous languages are dying off at an alarming rate, making it increasingly difficult for scientists and other experts to benefit from such knowledge.”

Science’s language bias, in other words, extends beyond what’s printed on the page of a research paper. As Perera explained it, so long as English remains the gatekeeper to scientific discourse, shoehorning scientists of other cultural backgrounds into a single language comes with “the great cost of losing their unique ways of communicating ideas.”

“They gradually lose their own voice,” he said—and over time, other ways of understanding the world can simply fade away.

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Universal Language Model Fine-tuning for Text Classification

Jeremy Howard , Sebastian Ruder

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[Universal Language Model Fine-tuning for Text Classification](https://aclanthology.org/P18-1031) (Howard & Ruder, ACL 2018)

• Universal Language Model Fine-tuning for Text Classification (Howard & Ruder, ACL 2018)
• Jeremy Howard and Sebastian Ruder. 2018. Universal Language Model Fine-tuning for Text Classification . In Proceedings of the 56th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers) , pages 328–339, Melbourne, Australia. Association for Computational Linguistics.

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• Brief Communication
• Published: 18 July 2022

An investigation across 45 languages and 12 language families reveals a universal language network

• Saima Malik-Moraleda   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1224-5323 1 , 2 , 3   na1 ,
• Dima Ayyash 1 , 2   na1 ,
• Jeanne Gallée   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9338-2727 3 ,
• Josef Affourtit 1 , 2 ,
• Malte Hoffmann   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5511-0739 4 , 5 ,
• Zachary Mineroff 1 , 2 , 6 ,
• Olessia Jouravlev 1 , 2 , 7 &
• Evelina Fedorenko   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3823-514X 1 , 2 , 3  

Nature Neuroscience volume  25 ,  pages 1014–1019 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

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• Auditory system
• Cognitive neuroscience
• Functional magnetic resonance imaging

To understand the architecture of human language, it is critical to examine diverse languages; however, most cognitive neuroscience research has focused on only a handful of primarily Indo-European languages. Here we report an investigation of the fronto-temporo-parietal language network across 45 languages and establish the robustness to cross-linguistic variation of its topography and key functional properties, including left-lateralization, strong functional integration among its brain regions and functional selectivity for language processing.

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The language network as a natural kind within the broader landscape of the human brain

Neural populations in the language network differ in the size of their temporal receptive windows

Language network lateralization is reflected throughout the macroscale functional organization of cortex

Data availability.

The data that support the findings of this study are available at https://osf.io/cw89s .

Code availability

The code used to analyze the data in this study is available at https://osf.io/cw89s .

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Acknowledgements

We thank Z. Fan, F. Frank and J. Vera-Rebollar for help with finding and recording the speakers; Z. Fan, J. Vera-Rebollar, F. Frank, A. Verkerk, the Max Planck Institute in Nijmegen, C. Kidd and M. Xiang for help with locating the texts of Alice in Wonderland in different languages; I. Blank, A. Paunov, B. Lipkin, D. Greve and B. Fischl for help with some of the analyses; J. McDermott for letting us use the sound booths in his laboratory for the recordings; J. Wu, N. Jhingan and B. Lipkin for creating a website for disseminating the localizer materials and script; M. Lewis for allowing us to use the linguistic family maps from the GeoCurrents website; B. A. Cabrera for help with figures; EvLab and TedLab members and collaborators; the audiences at the Neuroscience of Language Conference at NYU-AD (2019) and at the virtual Cognitive Neuroscience Society conference (2020) for helpful feedback; T. Gibson, D. Blasi, M. Seghier and two anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier drafts of the manuscript; Y. Diachek for collecting the data for the Russian speakers (used in Supplementary Fig. 4 ); J. Pryor and S. Lall for promoting this work when it was still at the early stages; and our participants. The authors would also like to acknowledge the Athinoula A. Martinos Imaging Center at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT and the support team (S. Shannon and A. Takahashi). S.M.-M. was supported by la Caixa Fellowship LCF/BQ/AA17/11610043, a Friends of McGovern Fellowship and the Dingwall Foundation Fellowship. E.F. was supported by NIH awards R00-HD057522, R01-DC016607 and R01-DC-NIDCD and research funds from the Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department, the McGovern Institute for Brain Research and the Simons Center for the Social Brain.

Author information

These authors contributed equally: Saima Malik-Moraleda, Dima Ayyash.

Authors and Affiliations

Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

Saima Malik-Moraleda, Dima Ayyash, Josef Affourtit, Zachary Mineroff, Olessia Jouravlev & Evelina Fedorenko

McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

Program in Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology, Harvard University, Boston, MA, USA

Saima Malik-Moraleda, Jeanne Gallée & Evelina Fedorenko

Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, USA

Malte Hoffmann

Department of Radiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

Eberly Center, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Zachary Mineroff

Department of Cognitive Science, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada

Olessia Jouravlev

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Contributions

Conceptualization, project administration and supervision: E.F. Methodology: S.M.-M., D.A., J.G. and E.F. Investigation (data collection): S.M.-M., D.A., J.G., J.A., Z.M. and O.J. Data curation: S.M.-M., D.A. and J.A. Formal analysis: S.M.-M. Validation: S.M.-M. and J.A. Visualization: S.M.-M. and M.H. Software: S.M.-M., D.A., J.A. and Z.M. Writing—original draft: S.M.-M., D.A. and E.F. Writing—review and editing: J.G., J.A., M.H., Z.M. and O.J.

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Correspondence to Saima Malik-Moraleda or Evelina Fedorenko .

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Extended data

Extended data fig. 1 comparison of the individual activation maps for the sentences  >  nonwords contrast and the native-language  >  degraded-language contrast in the two native-english-speaking participants..

The two maps are voxel-wise (within the union of the language parcels) spatially correlated at r = 0.77 and r = 0.99 for participants 492 and 502, respectively (the correlations are Fisher-transformed). Across the full set of participants, the average Fisher-transformed spatial correlation between the maps for the Sentences  >  Nonwords contrast in English and the Native-language  >  Degraded-language contrast in the participant’s native language (again, constrained to the language parcels) is r = 0.88 (SD = 0.43) for the left hemisphere and 0.73 (SD = 0.38) for the right hemisphere. (Note that using the union of the language parcels rather than the whole brain is conservative for computing these correlations; including all the voxels would inflate the correlations due to the large difference in activation levels between voxels that fall within the language parcels vs. outside their boundaries. Instead, we are zooming in on the activation landscape within the frontal, temporal, and parietal areas that house the language network and showing that these landscapes are spatially similar between the two contrasts in their fine-grained activation patterns).

Extended Data Fig. 2 Activation maps for the Alice language localizer contrast ( Native-language  >  Degraded-languag e) in the right hemisphere of a sample participant for each language (see Fig. 1 for the maps from the left hemisphere).

A significance map was generated for each participant by FreeSurfer 44 ; each map was smoothed using a Gaussian kernel of 4 mm full-width half-max and thresholded at the 70 th percentile of the positive contrast for each participant (this was done separately for each hemisphere; note that the same participants are used here as those used in Fig. 1 ). The surface overlays were rendered on the 80% inflated white-gray matter boundary of the fsaverage template using FreeView/FreeSurfer. Opaque red and yellow correspond to the 80 th and 99 th percentile of positive-contrast activation for each subject, respectively. Further, here and in Fig. 1 , small and/or idiosyncratic bits of activation (relatively common in individual-level language maps for example, 9, 10 ) were removed. In particular, clusters were excluded if a) their surface area was below 100 mm^2, or b) they did not overlap (by > 10%) with a mask created for a large number (n = 804 56 ) participants by overlaying the individual maps and excluding vertices that did not show language responses in at least 5% of the cohort. (We ensured that the idiosyncrasies were individual- and not language-specific: for each cluster removed, we checked that a similar cluster was not present for the second native speaker of that language.) These maps were used solely for visualization; all the statistical analyses were performed on the data analyzed in the volume.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Volume-based activation maps for the Native-language  >  Degraded-language contrast in the left hemisphere of a sample participant for each language (the same participants are used as those used in Fig. 1 and Extended Fig. 2 ).

a) Binarized maps that were generated for each participant by selecting the top 10% most responsive (to this contrast) voxels within each language parcel. These sets of voxels correspond to the fROIs used in the analyses reported in Extended Data Fig. 4 (except for the estimation of the responses to the conditions of the Alice localizer, where a subset of the runs was used to ensure independence; the fROIs in those cases will be similar but not identical to those displayed). b) Whole-brain maps that are thresholded at the p < 0.001 uncorrected level.

Extended Data Fig. 4 Percent BOLD signal change across (panel a) and within each of (panel b) the LH language functional ROIs (defined by the Native-language  >  Degraded-language contrast from the Alice localizer, cf. the Sentences  >  Nonwords contrast from the English localizer as in the main text and analyses; Fig. 3a and Supplementary Fig. 3 ) for the three language conditions of the Alice localizer task (Native language, Acoustically degraded native language, and Unfamiliar language), the spatial working memory (WM) task and the math task.

The dots correspond to languages (n = 45), and the labels (panel a only) mark the averages for each language family. In all panels, box plots include the first quartile (lower hinge), third quartile (upper hinge), and median (central line); upper and lower whiskers extend from the hinges to the largest value no further than 1.5 times the inter-quartile range; darker-colored dots correspond to outlier data points. Across the six fROIs, the Native-language condition elicits a reliably greater response than both the Degraded-language condition (2.32 vs. 0.91 % BOLD signal change relative to the fixation baseline; t(44)=18.57, p < 0.001) and the Unfamiliar-language condition (2.32 vs. 0.99; t(44)=18.02, p < 0.001). Responses to the Native-language condition are also significantly higher than those to the spatial working memory task (2.32 vs. 0.06; t(44)=11.16, p < 0.001) and the math task (2.32 vs. −0.02; t(40)=20.8, p < 0.001). These results also hold for each fROI separately, correcting for the number of fROIs ( Native-language  >  Degraded-language : ps<0.05; Native-language  >  Unfamiliar-language : ps<0.05; Native-language  >  Spatial WM : ps<0.05; and Native-language  >  Math : ps<0.05). All t-tests were two-tailed and corrected for the number of fROIs in the per-fROI analyses.

Extended Data Fig. 5 Percent BOLD signal change across the LH language functional ROIs (defined by the Sentences  >  Nonwords contrast) for the three language conditions of the Alice localizer task (Native language, Acoustically degraded native language, and Unfamiliar language), the spatial working memory (WM) task, and the math task shown for each language separately.

The dots correspond to participants for each language (n = 2 in all languages except Slovene, Swahili, Tagalog, Telugu, where n = 1). Box plots include the first quartile (lower hinge), third quartile (upper hinge), and median (central line); upper and lower whiskers extend from the hinges to the largest value no further than 1.5 times the inter-quartile range; darker-colored dots correspond to outlier data points. (Note that the scale of the y-axis differs across languages in order to allow for easier between-condition comparisons in each language).

Extended Data Fig. 6 A comparison of individual LH topographies between speakers of the same language vs. between speakers of different languages.

The goal of this analysis was to test whether inter-language / inter-language-family similarities might be reflected in the similarity structure of the activation patterns. To perform this analysis, we computed a Dice coefficient 57 for each pair of individual activation maps for the Intact-language  >  Degraded-language contrast (a total of n = 3,655 pairs across the 86 participants). To do so, we used the binarized maps like those shown in Extended Data Fig. 3a , where in each LH language parcel the top 10% of most responsive voxels were selected. Then, for each pair of images, we divided the number of overlapping voxels multiplied by 2 by the sum of the voxels across the two images (this value was always the same and equaling 1,358 given that each map had the same number of selected voxels). The resulting values can vary from 0 (no overlapping voxels) to 1 (all voxels overlap). a) A comparison of Dice coefficients for pairs of maps between languages (left, n = 3,655 pairs) vs. within languages (right; this could be done for 41/45 languages for which two speakers were tested). If the activation landscapes are more similar within than between languages, then the Dice coefficients for the within-language comparisons should be higher. Instead, no reliable difference was observed by an independent-samples t-test (average within-language: 0.17 (SD = 0.07), average between-language: 0.16 (SD = 0.06); t(40.7)=−0.52, p = 0.61; see also Extended Data Fig. 8 for evidence that the range of overlap values in probabilistic atlases created from speakers of diverse languages vs. speakers of the same language are comparable). Box plots include the first quartile (lower hinge), third quartile (upper hinge), and median (central line); upper and lower whiskers extend from the hinges to the largest value no further than 1.5 times the inter-quartile range; darker-colored dots correspond to outlier data points. b) Dice coefficient values for all pairs of within- and between-language comparisons (the squares in black on the diagonal correspond to languages with only one speaker tested). As can be seen in the figure and in line with the results in panel a, no structure is discernible that would suggest greater within-language / within-language-family topographic similarity. Similar to the results from the within- vs. between-language comparison in a, the within-language-family vs. between-language-family comparison did not reveal a difference (t(19.8)=0.71, p = 0.49). In summary, in the current dataset (collected with the shallow sampling approach, that is, a small number of speakers from a larger number of languages), no clear similarity structure is apparent that would suggest more similar topographies among speakers of the same language, or among speakers of languages that belong to the same language family.

Extended Data Fig. 7 Inter-region functional correlations in the language and the Multiple Demand networks during story comprehension for each of the 45 languages.

Inter-region functional correlations for the LH and RH of the language and the Multiple Demand (MD) networks during a naturalistic cognition paradigm (story comprehension in the participant’s native language) shown for each language separately.

Extended Data Fig. 8 Comparison of three probabilistic overlap maps (atlases).

Comparison of three probabilistic overlap maps (atlases): a) the Alice atlas (n = 86 native speakers of 45 languages) created from the Native-language  >  Degraded-language maps; b) the English atlas (n = 629 native English speakers; this is a subset of the Fedorenko lab’s Language Atlas (LanA 56 ) created from the Sentences  >  Nonwords maps; and) the Russian Atlas (n = 19 native Russian speakers) created from the Native-language  >  Degraded-language maps for the Russian version of the Alice localizer. All three atlases were created by selecting for each participant the top 10% of voxels (across the brain) based on the t-values for the relevant contrast in each participant, binarizing these maps, and then overlaying them in the common space. In each atlas, the value in each voxel corresponds to the proportion of participants (between 0 and 1) for whom that voxel belongs to the 10% of most language-responsive voxels. The probabilistic landscapes are similar across the atlases: within the union of the language parcels (see Extended Data Fig. 1 caption for an explanation of why this approach is more conservative than performing the comparison across the brain), the Alice atlas is voxel-wise spatially correlated with both the English atlas (r = 0.83) and the Russian atlas (r = 0.85). Furthermore, the range of non-zero overlap values is comparable between the Alice atlas (0.1–0.87; average within the language parcels=0.08, median=0.05) and each of the other atlases (the English atlas: 0.002–0.79; average within the language parcels=0.07, median=0.03; the Russian atlas: 0.05–0.84; average within the language parcels=0.13, median=0.11). The latter result suggests that the inter-individual variability in the topographies of activation landscapes elicited in 86 participants of 45 diverse languages is comparable to the inter-individual variability observed among native speakers of the same language.

Extended Data Fig. 9 Responses in the domain-general Multiple Demand network to the conditions of the Alice localizer task, the spatial working memory task, and the math task.

Percent BOLD signal change across the domain-general Multiple Demand (MD) network 15 , 52 functional ROIs for the three language conditions of the Alice localizer task (Native language, Acoustically degraded native language, and Unfamiliar language), the hard and easy conditions of the spatial working memory (WM) task, and the hard and easy conditions of the math task. The dots correspond to languages (n = 45 except for the Math Task, where n = 41). Box plots include the first quartile (lower hinge), third quartile (upper hinge), and median (central line); upper and lower whiskers extend from the hinges to the largest value no further than 1.5 times the inter-quartile range; darker-colored dots correspond to outlier data points. As in the main analyses (Fig. 3c ), the individual MD fROIs were defined by the Hard  >  Easy contrast in the spatial WM task (see 54 for evidence that other Hard  >  Easy contrasts activate similar areas). As expected given past work e.g., 54 , the MD fROIs show strong responses to both the spatial WM task and the math task, with stronger responses to the harder condition in each (3.05 vs. 1.93 for the spatial WM task, t(44)=23.1, p < 0.001; and 1.68 vs. 0.62 for the math task, t(40)=8.87, p < 0.001). These robust responses in the MD network suggest that the lack of responses to the spatial WM and math tasks in the language areas can be meaningfully interpreted. Furthermore, in line with past work e.g. 58 , 59 , 60 , MD fROIs show a stronger response to the acoustically degraded condition than the native language condition (0.26 vs. -0.10, t(44)=4.92, p < 0.01), and to the unfamiliar language condition than the native language condition (0.15 vs. -0.10, t(44)=4.96, p < 0.01). All t-tests were two-tailed with no adjustment for multiple comparisons.

Extended Data Fig. 10 Comparison of the individual activation maps for the Native-language  >  Degraded-language contrast and the Native-language  >  Unfamiliar-language contrast in four sample participants.

The activation landscapes are broadly similar: across the full set of 86 participants, the average Fisher-transformed voxel-wise spatial correlation within the union of the language parcels between the maps for the two contrasts is r = 0.66 (SD = 0.40). (Note that this correlation is lower than the correlation between the Native-language  >  Degraded-language contrast and the Sentences  >  Nonwords contrast in English (see Extended Data Fig. 1 ). This difference may be due to the greater variability in the participants’ responses to an unfamiliar language.) Furthermore, across the language fROIs, the magnitudes of the Native-language  >  Degraded-language and the Native-language  >  Unfamiliar-language effects are similar (mean = 1.02, SD(across languages)=0.41 vs. mean=1.07, SD = 0.37, respectively; t(44)=1.15, p = 0.26).

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Malik-Moraleda, S., Ayyash, D., Gallée, J. et al. An investigation across 45 languages and 12 language families reveals a universal language network. Nat Neurosci 25 , 1014–1019 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-022-01114-5

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Multilingualism, Social Inequality, and the Need for a Universal Language

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Journal of Universal Language 2023 ; 24 ( 1 ): 77 - 93

eISSN: 2508-5344

DOI: https://doi.org/10.22425/jul.2023.24.1.77

Copyright © 2023 Language Research Institute, Sejong University. Journal of Universal Language is an Open Access Journal. All articles are distributed online under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ ) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Received: Jan 15, 2023 ; Revised: Mar 01, 2023 ; Accepted: Mar 23, 2023

Published Online: Mar 31, 2023

With globalization and the increased need for cross-cultural communication, it appears that multilingualism has become more entrenched than ever and that the capacity to speak multiple languages is a significant advantage in most societies. However, the ability to speak multiple languages is not evenly distributed and having a dominant language as an alternative often leads to social disparities. The current paper explores how languages are used currently around the world, and how language dynamics works these days. It then identifies the prevalent issues that could be caused by language barriers and inequalities affecting individuals and communities worldwide in the field of education, employment, healthcare, and other social opportunities. The paper finally suggests the need for a universal language in the globalized world to tackle the individual and social issues caused by linguistic barriers, introducing ‘Unish’, an artificial language designed to overcome the limitations of natural languages in terms of ease of acquisition and equality of use, as a potential lingua franca.

1. Introduction

Language barriers and inequalities are a prevalent issue affecting individuals and communities worldwide. With globalization and the increasing need for cross-cultural communication, multilingualism has become more important than ever. However, the ability to speak multiple languages is not evenly distributed and it could lead to a number of social inequalities.

In fact, a large number of countries have social issues and problems caused by language barriers. Examples of such include India, a highly diverse country with over 22 official languages and numerous regional languages; Canada, a bilingual country with English and French as its official languages; Switzerland, with 4 official languages including German, French, Italian, and Romanish; Papua New Guinea, a linguistically diverse country with over 800 languages spoken; and South Africa with its 11 official languages. In countries like Papua New Guinea and South Africa, in rural areas where people may not be fluent in dominant languages great communication barriers can be created.

The current paper tries to investigate how multilingualism can bring about social phenomena by looking at how language is currently being used from a socio-linguistic perspective and explore potential conflicts caused by language barriers. Finally, the paper suggests a strong need for a universal language in the globalized world. In Section 2, multilingualism will be defined and language issues around the world related to multilingualism will be explored. Section 3 will examine how language barriers and inequalities caused by multilingualism affect individuals and societies globally. Section 4 discusses the necessity of a universal language and suggests ‘Unish’ as a lingua franca. Section 5 concludes the study.

2. Languages around the World

Multilingualism can be defined as the coexistence of more than two languages in a society ( Pilipenko 2019 ). Comparing the large number of existing languages to the number of countries, multilingualism can be a natural phenomenon. The exact number of languages in the world is not known, but it is broadly estimated to be around 7,000. Ethnologue, a comprehensive database of world languages maintained by SIL International, an entity that is dedicated to linguistic research and language development.

According to Ethnologue, 7,151 languages are spoken today and there are less than 200 sovereign nations in the world ( Extra 2007 ). It is also important to note that this is just an estimate, as the exact number of languages can be difficult to determine due to the ever-changing nature of languages. In other words, languages are dynamic, and new languages can emerge while others become extinct. In fact, about 40% of all languages (3,045 languages) spoken today are endangered with less than 1,000 speakers remaining. Languages become extinct when the users of the language no longer speak and teach the languages ( Ethnologue 2023 ). If a language is endangered and has a declining number of speakers, the speakers of the language may also use a more widely spoken or dominant language for practical purposes.

Examples of endangered languages include Welsh language spoken in Wales, United Kingdom. Welsh has faced challenges in maintaining its use and vitality due to several factors, such as policies that discouraged its use, as well as the widespread use of English in Wales. Despite recent efforts to revive the language, it still remains an endangered language, and English is clearly the dominant language in Wales ( Lunney et al. 1995 ). Then, one might wonder what languages include dominant languages in the world and what languages are most spoken in the world. Ethnologue 200 published a list of the largest languages in the world. Figure 1 shows the top 10 most spoken languages in the world in 2022.

As Figure 1 shows, English accounts for the largest language users with almost 1.5 billion speakers in the world. It is followed by the Mandarin Chinese language with nearly 1.2 billion speakers in the world. The other dominant languages include Hindi, Spanish, French, Standard Arabic, Bengali, Russian, Portuguese, and Urdu. 1 What should be noted in the most spoken languages is that while English was nominated as the largest language in the world, the number includes both native and non-native speakers around the world. Mandarin Chinese is considered the largest language when counting only native languages, which can be attributed to China’s population. According to Ethnologue, the number of native English speakers is 373 million, while an additional 1.1 billion speakers of English are non-native speakers. English is spoken in 146 countries including many African countries ( Ethnologue 2022 ). Figure 2 shows representative countries where English is dominantly used. As can be seen in Figure 2 , English language is used in many countries, and the rate of use varies from country to country. While the usage rate of English is very high in North America, Britain, and Australia, the rate of English use in other countries is relatively low.

The percentages of English usage rates presented in Figure 2 indicate that English and other language or languages are used together in one country except Australia, where it is claimed that English is 100% used. As shown in Figure 1 , many countries seem to have different language groups within its borders and the degree of heterogeneity would vary from country to country.

Mishina (2020) claims that linguistically homogeneous countries are difficult to encounter and the number of countries where more than 90 percent of the population speak a single language is very few— Japan, South Korea, etc. ( Pilipenko 2019 , Mishina 2020 ). Thus, multilingualism is a very common phenomenon in the globalized world, and it is imperative to investigate the impact of multilingualism on societies.

3. Potential Conflicts of Multilingualism

Multilingualism is, in fact, known to bring many benefits, including increased opportunities for communication, cultural exchanges, and increased job opportunities, and improved cognitive abilities ( Cummins & Swain 2014 , Valian 2015 , Hartanto et al. 2018 , Legault et al. 2019 , among many others). In the global world, multilingualism is broadly regarded as an asset in the job market. Large-scale companies operate in multiple countries and require employees who can speak multiple languages.

In addition, research has shown that multilingualism can have a positive impact on cognitive abilities. According to Cummins & Swain (2014) , Valian (2015) , Hartanto et al. (2018) , Legault et al. (2019) , among many others, bilingual individuals have been found to perform better on tests of executive function, which involves the ability to switch between tasks and inhibit irrelevant information. Additionally, speaking multiple languages has been linked to improvements in memory, problem-solving, and critical thinking skills ( Bialystok et al. 2012 ). While there are benefits to being multilingual, there are critical disadvantages or challenges associated with multilingualism.

When a variety of languages exist in one country or in one society, it suggests the existence of a dominant language or an official language. Having a dominant language can be both a benefit and a challenge in today’s global society. A dominant language is one that is spoken by a majority of people in a certain region, country, or even the entire world ( Duchêne 2020 ). Dominant languages often have a significant impact on the culture, politics, and economy of the areas where they are spoken.

However, the dominance of a particular language can also have negative consequences. One of the biggest challenges is that it can lead to linguistic imperialism, where the language and culture of powerful countries are imposed on less powerful countries ( Duchêne 2020 ). This can lead to the erosion of cultural diversity and the loss of languages that are important to local communities. It can also create a sense of linguistic inequality, where those who do not speak the dominant language are at a disadvantage in terms of access to education, employment, healthcare, and other opportunities.

Moreover, the dominance of a language can also reinforce existing power structures and inequalities. For example, in many countries such as India, the dominant language is associated with the elites, while marginalized groups speak minority languages ( Mohanty 2010 , 2019 ). This can create a language hierarchy, where those who speak the dominant language are seen as more intelligent or capable than those who do not. It is also important to recognize the ways in which the use of a dominant language can marginalize minority groups ( Mohanty 2010 , 2019 ; Duchêne 2020 ). In fact, many academics have studied the conflicts and problems caused by language barriers. Particularly, research has been conducted in the fields of education, healthcare system, politics and legal studies, and so on ( Darvin & Norton 2014 , Hargreaves 2022 ).

Firstly, in terms of education, according to Ethnologue (2021) , 2 approximately 35% of all children around the globe start their first education using a language that they are not fully familiar with. Despite the fact that education is a vital aspect for human well-being, studies indicate that over a third of the world’s children attend schools where the language of instruction (LOI) is not their native language. Figure 3 illustrates percentage of children with access to L2 education by region.

According to Ethnologue, the global population of children aged 0–19 exceeds 2.5 billion. Although around 1.65 million of them are able to receive education in their mother tongue (L1), there are over 890,000 who do not have this opportunity. Figure 3 illustrates that the impact of this disparity is greater on the world’s most destitute and susceptible communities, perpetuating cycles of poverty and social inequality in terms of education. A number of studies have suggested that having instruction with non-native language would make it difficult for learners to understand complex concepts and engage in meaningful discussions. Furthermore, students who are not fluent in LOI may feel less confident, and this can affect their motivation and performance in the classroom ( Darvin & Norton 2014 ; Vandrick 2014 ; Jayadeva 2018 , 2019 ; Demeter 2019 ; Borooah & Sabharwal 2021 ).

Secondly, the social domain most affected by language barriers is the healthcare system, and many academic studies in this field have actually been conducted ( Carrasquillo et al. 1999 , Barr & Wanat 2005 , van Rosse et al. 2016 , Venkatesan et al. 2022 ). van Rosse et al. (2016) examined the impact of language barriers on patient safety in hospital care and found that language barriers can lead to miscommunication and medication errors. Carrasquillo et al. (1999) examined the impact of language barriers on patient satisfaction in an emergency room, and found that language barriers can lead to decreased satisfaction with care and miscommunication, and longer waiting times. Barr & Wanat (2005) examined how language barriers can impact healthcare access in the African American community and found that language barriers can result in increased healthcare costs and decreased healthcare utilization.

Thirdly, language can be a key factor in perpetuating social inequality, particularly in the realm of politics. Ives (2014) argues that language barriers can limit access to political information and participation, which can in turn marginalize certain communities and contribute to political inequality. In his work, Ives emphasizes the importance of linguistic justice, or the fair distribution of language resources and opportunities. In addition, according to Fraga & Merseth (2016) , lower rates of Latino and Asian American’s political participation in the United States can be attributed to language barriers. As shown above, language barriers can cause a number of social inequalities.

4. The Need for a Universal Language

In our increasingly globalized world, communication across linguistic and cultural barriers has become a critical challenge. While there are thousands of languages spoken around the world, there is no universal language that can be used by everyone to communicate. As we have examined in the previous sections, language barriers can cause social inequalities in a range of areas including limited opportunities for education and employment, healthcare and political participation. Attempts to address inequalities caused by language barriers have historically been constant. Research has been conducted on the necessity and development of a universal language, and Esperanto can be regarded as the representative constructed language so far.

Esperanto was invented by Zamenhof, a Polish ophthalmologist, in the late 19th century. Zamenhof grew up in a multilingual environment in Bialystok, Poland, where he witnessed the cultural and linguistic tensions between different ethnic groups. He believed that the diversity of languages was a barrier to international communication and that a universal language could help promote peace and understanding between nations ( Li 2003 ). Zamenhof’s goal was to create a neutral language that would be easy to learn, with a regular grammar and a simple vocabulary. He hoped that Esperanto would serve as a common language for people from different countries and cultures to communicate with each other on an equal footing, without any one language being dominant ( Sutton 2008 ). Esperanto gained popularity in the early 20th century, particularly in Europe, and has since been adopted by a global community of speakers. However, Esperanto, despite its idealistic goals and initial popularity, has not become as widely adopted as Zamenhof and its early supporters might have hoped for various reasons. While Esperanto may have inspired an intellectual movement, it appeared to be ineffectual and impractical as a medium of global communication ( Patterson & Huff 1999 , Phillipson 1999 , Smokotin & Petrova 2015). For example, Patterson & Huff (1999) warned that an idea that is believed to be superior but challenging to implement will not replace practical strategies that utilize existing systems in medical field. One of the limitations of the language is that the language is based on Slavic and Romance languages, thus it was difficult to acquire for speakers from other linguistic backgrounds, and at the same time, the influence of English grew at an overwhelming rate, leaving Esperanto to lose its competitiveness as a world language.

Therefore, there is a strong need for a new constructed language, which can be more familiar to the world population. ‘Unish’ should be considered as an excellent artificial language that many people around the world can learn by complementing the shortcomings of previously developed artificial languages. Unish is an artificial language designed to overcome the limitations that are inherent in natural languages in terms of ease of acquisition and equality of use. In order to create a language that is easily accessible to the largest possible number of the world population, the Language Research Institute at Sejong University, in Seoul, South Korea, first selected vocabulary and grammar based on the principles of “commonality”, “simplicity”, and “ease of use” from among a total of 15 languages, including 14 major languages that were either native languages spoken by around 70 million people or international languages in the past, such as English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, German, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, as well as the artificial language, Esperanto. At the same time, considering the fact that English is currently the most widely used language worldwide, the project actively utilizes English vocabulary and grammar, while removing the inconsistencies between spelling and pronunciation and irregularities in vocabulary and grammar to promote ease of learning and use.

Several studies have proven the advantages of Unish as a constructed language ( Choo 2001 ; Lee 2002 ; Park & Tak 2017 ; Park & Chin 2020 ; Tak 2020 ; Park 2021 , 2022 ). Lee (2002) compared Unish grammar to Esperanto and found that Unish is simpler, more logical, and more regular than Esperanto in linguistic aspects, such as the formation of interrogative, passive, relative pronouns, and agreements. Park (2021 , 2022 ) argues functional categories of languages are sometimes extremely difficult for L2 or L3 learners. For example, articles are one of the notorious linguistic features that is very difficult to acquire. Park (2021 , 2022 ) reviewed article systems in terms of typological aspects and concluded that having article systems in languages are not typologically neutral. It also reviewed article usage in Esperanto and Unish, and was concluded that Unish would be more typologically neutral and easy to acquire because it does not have articles at all. As many studies have proven, Unish has many linguistic advantageous features for language learners to acquire their additional language. Thus the current paper urges that Unish can be a successful and sustainable constructed language.

5. Conclusion

Multilingualism is a phenomenon that exists the world over in the globalized era, and that there are various issues that can arise related to it. The dominant language created as a result of multilingualism causes inequality between first-class citizens and those who do not speak or who are not fluent in the dominant language. The current study also confirmed that these problems can be found in many countries around the world and in various realms of society. The current paper argues that if a certain natural language is used as a global language, there will be problems of inequality between native and non-native speakers as we have discussed, thus in order to overcome these shortcomings, a new artificial language should be developed, and the current paper claims that ‘Unish’ can be a successful constructed language.

§ This work was supported by Research on the Future Strategy of Sejong University in 2022.

1 Numbers of each language speakers can be found at https://www.ethnologue.com/guides/ethnologue200 .

2 https://www.ethnologue.com/insights/languages-of-instruction/

The universal language network: A cross-linguistic investigation spanning 45 languages and 11 language families

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To understand the architecture of human language, it is critical to examine diverse languages; yet most cognitive neuroscience research has focused on a handful of primarily Indo-European languages. Here, we report a large-scale investigation of the fronto-temporal language network across 45 languages and establish the cross-linguistic generality of its key functional properties, including general topography, left-lateralization, strong functional integration among its brain regions, and functional selectivity for language processing.

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Title: towards the next 1000 languages in multilingual machine translation: exploring the synergy between supervised and self-supervised learning.

Abstract: Achieving universal translation between all human language pairs is the holy-grail of machine translation (MT) research. While recent progress in massively multilingual MT is one step closer to reaching this goal, it is becoming evident that extending a multilingual MT system simply by training on more parallel data is unscalable, since the availability of labeled data for low-resource and non-English-centric language pairs is forbiddingly limited. To this end, we present a pragmatic approach towards building a multilingual MT model that covers hundreds of languages, using a mixture of supervised and self-supervised objectives, depending on the data availability for different language pairs. We demonstrate that the synergy between these two training paradigms enables the model to produce high-quality translations in the zero-resource setting, even surpassing supervised translation quality for low- and mid-resource languages. We conduct a wide array of experiments to understand the effect of the degree of multilingual supervision, domain mismatches and amounts of parallel and monolingual data on the quality of our self-supervised multilingual models. To demonstrate the scalability of the approach, we train models with over 200 languages and demonstrate high performance on zero-resource translation on several previously under-studied languages. We hope our findings will serve as a stepping stone towards enabling translation for the next thousand languages.

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• > Journals
• > Modern Intellectual History
• > Volume 15 Issue 2
• > “THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE OF THE FUTURE”: DECOLONIZATION,...

Article contents

“the universal language of the future”: decolonization, development, and the american embrace of global english, 1945–1965.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 May 2017

The two decades following the Second World War were marked by geopolitical and pedagogical ferment, as researchers and policymakers debated the role of language teaching in a rapidly changing world. As European empires collapsed amid Cold War competition for global influence, limited colonial education systems gave way to new discourses connecting postcolonial educational expansion, international development aid, and language teaching. This article reveals increasing American interest in the connections between development and vehicular English from 1945 to 1965. Drawing on the work of anglophone reformers, American elites promoted English as a development tool, and institutionalized policies designed to spread it abroad. The rise of the idea of global English in the United States, the article shows, was rooted in an instrumental conception of language, which framed English as a politically neutral vehicle for communication, yet this discourse was contradicted by the United States’ strategic ambitions.

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1 Liora R. Halperin usefully distinguishes between the ways discourse structures “collective attitudes” and “historical discussions about language itself,” and notes that analysis of the latter has, until recently, been rarer in historiography. Halperin , Liora R. , Babel in Zion: Jews, Nationalism, and Language Diversity in Palestine, 1920–1948 ( New Haven , 2015 ), 19 Google Scholar . Michael , D. Gordin's Scientific Babel: How Science Was Done before and after Global English ( Chicago , 2015 ) Google Scholar ; and Northrup's , David How English Became the Global Language ( Basingstoke , 2013 ) CrossRef Google Scholar , discussed below, are two recent exceptions.

2 See, for instance, Maier , Charles S. , Among Empires: American Ascendancy and Its Predecessors ( Cambridge, MA , 2006 ) CrossRef Google Scholar .

3 On English in colonial India see Evans , Stephen , “ Macaulay's Minute Revisited: Colonial Language Policy in Nineteenth-Century India ,” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 23 / 4 ( 2002 ), 260 –81 CrossRef Google Scholar ; and Roy , Modhumita , “‘ Englishing’ India: Reinstituting Class and Social Privilege ,” Social Text 39 ( 1994 ), 83 – 109 CrossRef Google Scholar . On English and British imperial expansion more broadly see Magee , Gary B. and Thompson , Andrew S. , Empire and Globalisation: Networks of People, Goods and Capital in the British World, c.1850–1914 ( Cambridge , 2010 ) CrossRef Google Scholar ; and Belich , James , Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-World, 1783–1939 ( Oxford , 2009 ) CrossRef Google Scholar .

4 Douglas Batson, memo to William Benton, 12 May 1965, William Benton Papers, Box 393, Folder 6, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

5 Nor can they explain the broader rise of vehicular English, which “actually postdates the high-water mark of the British Empire.” Gordin, Scientific Babel , 295. The historiography of education in the British Empire depicts protracted British ambivalence about the place of English in colonial schooling. Thomas Macaulay's minute of 1835 famously declared the desirability of spreading English in India, while at the same time clarifying it was destined for a circumscribed “class” of indigenous interlocutors rather than the “great mass of the population.” Nevertheless, the Indian case became a well-worn trope in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as the British expanded their presence in Africa. Commentators repeatedly invoked the dangers of creating a faction of politicized Africans through English-language education, as had emerged in India. Evans, “Macaulay's Minute Revisited,” 268–72, 276–9; Whitehead , Clive , “ The Medium of Instruction in British Colonial Education: A Case of Cultural Imperialism or Enlightened Paternalism? ”, History of Education 24 / 1 ( 1995 ), 1–15, at 2 – 4 CrossRef Google Scholar , 14–15; Küster , Sybille , “‘ Book Learning’ versus ‘Adapted Education’: The Impact of Phelps-Stokesism on Colonial Education Systems in Central Africa in the Interwar Period ,” Paedagogica Historica 43 / 1 ( 2007 ), 79 – 97 CrossRef Google Scholar .

6 Relevant historiography includes Adas , Michael , Dominance by Design: Technological Imperatives and America's Civilizing Mission ( Cambridge, MA , 2006 ), 160 CrossRef Google Scholar , 165–7, 175–7; Anthony May , Glenn , Social Engineering in the Philippines: The Aims, Execution, and Impact of American Colonial Policy, 1900–1913 ( Westport, CT , 1980 ), 82 – 84 Google Scholar ; and Navarro , José-Manuel , Creating Tropical Yankees: Social Science Textbooks and U.S. Ideological Control in Puerto Rico, 1898–1908 ( New York , 2002 ), 31 – 113 Google Scholar . See also Tupas , Ruanni and Lorente , Beatriz P. , “ A ‘New’ Politics of Language in the Philippines: Bilingual Education and the New Challenge of the Mother Tongues ,” in Sercombe , Peter and Tupas , Ruanni , eds., Language, Education and Nation-Building: Assimilation and Shift in Southeast Asia ( Basingstoke , 2014 ), 165 –80 Google Scholar ; Antonio Barreto , Amílcar , The Politics of Language in Puerto Rico ( Gainesville , 2001 ), 1 – 33 Google Scholar ; and Go , Julian , “ Chains of Empire, Projects of State: Political Education and U.S. Colonial Rule in Puerto Rico and the Philippines ,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 42 / 2 ( 2000 ), 333–62, at 333 –4 CrossRef Google Scholar , 343.

7 On this dramatic expansion in the geography of US foreign policy see Westad , Odd Arne , The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times ( Cambridge , 2005 ), 23 –5 CrossRef Google Scholar ; and Immerwahr , Daniel , Thinking Small: The United States and the Lure of Community Development ( Cambridge, MA , 2015 ), 52 –3 Google Scholar . As Immerwahr indicates, it presented a social-scientific challenge, for the United States knew very little about the internal dynamics of many European colonies at the moment it ascended to superpower status.

8 Notable works focusing on modernization and development in US foreign policy include Latham , Michael E. , Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and “Nation Building” in the Kennedy Era ( Chapel Hill , 2000 ) Google Scholar ; Gilman , Nils , Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America ( Baltimore , 2003 ) Google Scholar ; Simpson , Bradley R. , Economists with Guns: Authoritarian Development and U.S.–Indonesian Relations, 1960–1968 ( Stanford , 2008 ) Google Scholar ; and Ekbladh , David , The Great American Mission: Modernization and the Construction of an American World Order ( Princeton , 2010 ) CrossRef Google Scholar . Daniel Immerwahr has recently contested this literature's prevailing view of top-down modernization, arguing that Cold War-era models privileging industrial growth and centralized authority coexisted with a powerful countercurrent of community-oriented development thinking. This distinction, modified slightly, is also useful for distinguishing the grandiose schemes of certain mid-century policy elites from more modest language education efforts. Here I use the terms “modernization” and “modernizers” in a somewhat broader sense, chronologically and conceptually, than is typically connoted by “modernization theory,” to refer to policy intellectuals who hoped to project vehicular languages onto heterogeneous populations without much concern for local wishes. In the United States and Britain, language modernizers’ aims mirrored those of modernization theorists in that both looked forward to a global convergence towards western norms and practices (in this case, a convergence of language use towards some form of English). Also like the modernization theorists, language modernizers would find their preconceptions increasingly challenged by the late 1960s. Their keywords, however, did not disappear entirely. Immerwahr acknowledges that many then and since have used the terms “modernization” and “development” loosely and interchangeably (Immerwahr, Thinking Small , 8, 61). Melvin Fox's work on language aid at the Ford Foundation, discussed below, illustrates the intertwined nature of modernization and development in the postwar decades.

9 See, inter alia, Gordin, Scientific Babel; Halperin, Babel in Zion; Farina Mir, The Social Space of Language: Vernacular Culture in British Colonial Punjab (Berkeley, 2010); Mitchell , Lisa , Language, Emotion, and Politics in South India: The Making of a Mother Tongue ( Bloomington , 2009 Google Scholar ); and Mullaney , Thomas S. , “ The Moveable Typewriter: How Chinese Typists Developed Predictive Text during the Height of Maoism ,” Technology and Culture 53 / 4 ( 2012 ), 777 – 814 CrossRef Google Scholar .

10 Northrup, How English Became the Global Language , xi–xii, 16–22; Gordin, Scientific Babel , 307–8. The linguist Crystal , David likewise defends the functionalist view, framing the spread of English in terms of an “urgent need for a global language.” Crystal , English as a Global Language , 2nd edn ( Cambridge , 2003 ), 14 . CrossRef Google Scholar

11 Robert Phillipson's Linguistic Imperialism (Oxford, 1992), an influential intervention from within the field of linguistics, echoes anticolonial and postcolonial intellectuals ranging from Gandhi to the Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, who announced his switch from writing in English to writing in Gĩkũyũ and Kiswahili in Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (London, 1986), xiv.

12 This lacuna exists on either side of the functionalism divide. Northrup elides the Cold War development rationale behind the Peace Corps and other postwar US aid initiatives—the same forces which landed him in Nigeria to teach English—mentioning the Peace Corps exactly once, in a prefatory note. Meanwhile, Marnie Holborow, in a Marxist account of global English, associates the concept of languages of “wider communication” with 1970s scholarship in linguistics, when in fact talk of languages of “wide” and “wider communication” appeared in policy debates two decades earlier. Cf. Northrup, How English Became the Global Language , xi; Holborow, The Politics of English: A Marxist View of Language (London, 1999), 69–70.

13 Gordin, Scientific Babel , 295, 310, 315.

14 Quoted in Phillipson, Linguistic Imperialism , 138; on postwar discourses see ibid., 65–7. Although the British Council was forbidden from operating in the colonies, interwar debates over the place of English in colonial education happened likewise under the sign of culture, with advocates of English-language education arguing that it would help to solidify British values in the colonies.

15 Mary Louise Pratt has conceptualized “contact zones” as “social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power” (Mary Louise Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone,” Profession , 1991, 33–40). By framing UNESCO as arena rather than actor, I depart from existing scholarship on its work in educational development, which concentrates primarily on the operational and geopolitical difficulties facing the organization's literacy activities from the 1940s through the 1960s: that is to say, the budgetary constraints, internecine rivalries, and Cold War impasses that hampered UNESCO's educational efforts. Cf. Jones , Phillip W. with Coleman , David , The United Nations and Education: Multilateralism, Development and Globalisation ( London , 2005 ) CrossRef Google Scholar ; Dorn , Charles and Ghodsee , Kristen , “ The Cold War Politicization of Literacy: Communism, UNESCO, and the World Bank ,” Diplomatic History 36 / 2 ( 2012 ), 373 –98 CrossRef Google Scholar ; and Maurel , Chloé , Histoire de l'Unesco: Les trente premières années. 1945–1974 ( Paris , 2010 ) Google Scholar , esp. 76–85, 275–6.

16 On Felix Walter see Stern , H. H. , Foreign Languages in Primary Education: The Teaching of Foreign or Second Languages to Younger Children ( London , 1967 ) Google Scholar , ix; and “In Memoriam,” Linguistic Reporter 2/6 (1960), 2, available at www.cal.org/content/download/1968/24926/file/LinguisticReporterVolume2.pdf , accessed 16 Feb. 2016.

17 Inderjeet Parmar, Foundations of the American Century: The Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller Foundations in the Rise of American Power (New York, 2012), 126–35.

18 Fox , Melvin J. , Language and Development: A Retrospective Survey of Ford Foundation Language Projects, 1952–1974 ( New York , 1975 ). Google Scholar

19 “General Considerations of Language Problems in Fundamental Education,” 19 June 1947, UNESCO/Educ./31/1947, File 375:4.A.064.“47”; C. K. Ogden, “Article,” 27 July 1946, File 375:4; “Meeting of Experts on Language Problems in Fundamental Education: Notes for Acting Director General's Opening Speech,” 30 June 1947, File 375:4.A.064.“47”; Felix Walter, “UNESCO and Language,” 31 March 1952, EDIU/6/52025, File 408.3:37, Part I. All in UNESCO Archives, Paris, France.

20 On France, contrast Weber , Eugen , Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France ( Stanford , 1976 ) Google Scholar ; with Chanet , Jean-François , L’école républicaine et les petites patries ( Paris , 1996 ) Google Scholar . On Mexico see Vaughan , Mary K. , Cultural Politics in Revolution: Teachers, Peasants, and Schools in Mexico, 1930–1940 ( Tucson , 1997 ) Google Scholar ; and Rockwell , Elsie , “ Schools of the Revolution: Enacting and Contesting State Forms in Tlaxcala, 1910–1930 ,” in Joseph , Gilbert M. and Nugent , Daniel , eds., Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico ( Durham, NC , 1994 ), 170 – 208 Google Scholar . On the Soviet Union see Fitzpatrick , Sheila , Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union 1921–1934 ( Cambridge , 1979 ) CrossRef Google Scholar ; and Clark , Charles E. , Uprooting Otherness: The Literacy Campaign in NEP-Era Russia ( Cranbury, NJ , 2000 ) Google Scholar .

21 Barker , John , “ Where the Missionary Frontier Ran Ahead of Empire ,” in Etherington , Norman , ed., Missions and Empire ( Oxford , 2005 ), 86 – 106 Google Scholar ; Curtis , Sarah A. , Civilizing Habits: Women Missionaries and the Revival of French Empire ( Oxford , 2010 ) CrossRef Google Scholar . Cf. Northrup, How English Became the Global Language , 76–7.

22 Renoliet , Jean-Jacques , L'Unesco oubliée: La Société des Nations et la coopération intellectuelle (1919–1946) ( Paris , 1999 ), 33 –4 Google Scholar .

23 Mazower , Mark , Governing the World: The History of an Idea ( New York , 2012 ) Google Scholar , 191–213, xvii; Maurel, Histoire de l'Unesco , 15–27; Renoliet, L'Unesco oubliée , 158–78.

24 Robert Rice, “The Thousand Silver Threads,” New Yorker , 16 Feb. 1952, 38.

25 Arthur Sweetser, letter to William Benton, 17 Aug. 1950, Benton Papers, Box 388, Folder 2. On Sweetser see Mazower, Governing the World , 145, 192–3, 196, 211, 213.

26 On the intersection of mass-communications technologies and internationalism at UNESCO see Tom Allbeson, “Photographic Diplomacy in the Postwar World: UNESCO and the Conception of Photography as a Universal Language,” Modern Intellectual History 12/2 (2015), 383–415, at 386–7.

27 Bellos , David , Is That a Fish in Your Ear? The Amazing Adventure of Translation ( London , 2012 ), 268 –82 Google Scholar .

28 Colonel A. Myers, “Education for International Understanding: The Part of Language-Teaching,” 2 July 1947, Educ./38/1947, File 375:4.A.064.“47,” UNESCO Archives.

29 Julian Huxley, letter to Margaret Read, 3 April 1947, File 375:4.A.064.“47,” UNESCO Archives; Yvonne Oddon, “Recommendations for the Planning of Instructional Materials in a Fundamental Education Experiment,” 30 Jan. 1949, and Alfred Métraux and Yvonne Oddon, “L’éducation de base dans la vallée de Marbial,” 1 March 1949, Folder 135, Box 20, Series 100, Record Group 1.2, Projects, Rockefeller Foundation records, Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC); Watras , Joseph , “ UNESCO's Programme of Fundamental Education, 1946–1959 ,” History of Education 39 / 2 ( 2010 ), 219–37, at 225 –7 CrossRef Google Scholar ; Julia Pohle, “Kêbé l'Inesko Fò!”, UNESCO Courier , Sept. 2010, 41–3.

30 “Notes for Acting Director General's Opening Speech”; “General Considerations of Language Problems in Fundamental Education.”

31 On the evolution of UNESCO's programs see Maurel, Histoire de l'Unesco , 264–5; and Watras, “UNESCO's Programme of Fundamental Education,” 236–7. Felix Walter, among others, would continue to frame developing-world multilingualism as a “barrier” and “problem” in the 1950s: see Walter, “UNESCO and Language”; [Felix Walter], “UNESCO and Language Teaching,” 1955, File 408.3:37, Part II, UNESCO Archives; and Felix Walter, “UNESCO and the Teaching of Modern Languages,” 19 March 1959, ED/II/3/59.029, File 408.3:37, Part II, UNESCO Archives. Walter's authorship of “UNESCO and Language Teaching” can be assumed based on its similarities to his signed 1952 and 1959 reports, including file location, writing style, and shared preoccupations with American teaching techniques and multilingualism in Asia and Africa.

32 See, for instance, Simpson , Christopher , Science of Coercion: Communication Research and Psychological Warfare 1945–1960 ( New York , 1994 ) Google Scholar ; McCoy , Alfred W. , A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror ( New York , 2006 ) Google Scholar , chap. 2; and Ryan , Joseph W. , Samuel Stouffer and the GI Survey: Sociologists and Soldiers during the Second World War ( Knoxville , 2013 ) Google Scholar .

33 “Meeting of Experts on Language Problems in Fundamental Education: Summary Report of the First Meeting,” 17 July 1947, Educ./Com.Exp./S.R.1, File 375:4.A.064.“47,” UNESCO Archives; “Language-teaching and UNESCO,” 2 June 1947, Educ./39/1947, File 375:4.A.064.“47,” UNESCO Archives. On the Army Specialized Training Program see Mitchell , Cheryl Brown and Vidal , Kari Ellington , “ Weighing the Ways of the Flow: Twentieth Century Language Instruction ,” Modern Language Journal , 85 / 1 ( 2001 ), 26–38, at 29 CrossRef Google Scholar .

34 At the turn of the twentieth century, proponents of the “direct method” had encountered pushback from classicists and from scholars who did not have oral fluency in target languages—two groups which, in the case of elite British boarding schools, overlapped. The First World War presented a more political threat to the direct method, which had roots in Germany. Scarce resources could also tip the scales in favor of reading over speaking and listening skills. One influential study of language teaching in American higher education, the 1929 Coleman Report, concluded that reading proficiency should be stressed for the simple reason that it required less classroom time and could be taught more effectively by nonnative speakers. On the history of language-teaching pedagogies in Britain and the United States in the first half of the twentieth century see Bayley , Susan N. , “ The Direct Method and Modern Language Teaching in England 1880–1918 ,” History of Education 27 / 1 ( 1998 ), 39 – 57 CrossRef Google Scholar ; Mitchell and Vidal, “Twentieth Century Language Instruction,” 26–30; and Parker , William , The National Interest and Foreign Languages: A Discussion Guide and Work Paper for Citizen Consultations , rev. edn ( Washington, DC , 1957 ; first published 1954), 51 – 61 Google Scholar .

35 “Language-teaching and UNESCO.” The results of the Army Specialized Training Program, informed by the behaviorism of B. F. Skinner, would coalesce after the war into the “audiolingual method” (sometimes referred to as the “oral–aural” method), which emphasized rote oral drilling as a means of enabling students to render language patterns without the need for conscious reflection. The audiolingual method was popular in the 1950s and the 1960s, before being undermined by empirical findings and by the spread of Noam Chomsky's critique of behaviorism. Mitchell and Vidal, “Twentieth Century Language Instruction,” 29–30; Fox, Language and Development , 19; “Forty Years of Language Teaching,” Language Teacher 40 (2006). 1–2; “From Audiolingual to Suggestopedia: the Varieties of Language Instruction,” Chronicle of Higher Education , 22 Feb. 1989, A14.

36 Richards in “Meeting of Experts on Language Problems in Fundamental Education: Summary Report of the Sixth Meeting,” 25 July 1947, Educ./Com.Exp./S.R.6. Myers in “Meeting of Experts on Language Problems in Fundamental Education: Report of the 3rd meeting,” 18 July 1947, Educ./Com.Exp./S.R.3; “Meeting of Experts on Language Problems in Fundamental Education: Summary Report of the Fifth Meeting,” 22 July 1947, Educ./Com.Exp./S.R.5; “Summary Report of the Sixth Meeting”; and Col. Myers, “Education for International Understanding: The Part of Language-Teaching,” 2 July 1947, Educ./38/1947. All in File 375:4.A.064.“47,” UNESCO Archives.

37 Huxley, letter to Read, 3 April 1947; André Martinet, “Reflections on the Choice of a Language in Fundamental Education,” 3 July 1947, Educ./41/1947, File 375:4.A.064.“47,” UNESCO Archives. Felix Walter's 1952 report “UNESCO and Language” explained that the artificial-language advocates at the 1947 meeting believed that artificial tongues were means of avoiding “linguistic imperialism.”

38 C. K. Ogden, “Article”; see also Walter, “UNESCO and Language.”

39 Richards in “Globalingo,” Time , 31 Dec. 1945.

40 Alice L. Conklin has shown how colonial governance in French West Africa took a conservative turn during the interwar period, in response to urban Africans’ demands for a more equitable distribution of power. Shedding its earlier philosophy of assimilation, the interwar French administration embraced “associationalist” policies aimed at bolstering the authority of designated tribal elites. Conklin , Alice L. , A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895–1930 ( Stanford , 1997 ) Google Scholar , chaps. 5, 6; see also Cooper , Frederick , “ Development, Modernization, and the Social Sciences in the Era of Decolonization: The Examples of British and French Africa ,” Revue d'histoire des sciences humaines 10 ( 2004 ), 9 – 38 CrossRef Google Scholar . On late colonial violence see Fabian Klose, “‘Source of Embarrassment’: Human Rights, State of Emergency, and the Wars of Decolonization,” in Hoffmann , Stefan-Ludwig , ed., Human Rights in the Twentieth Century ( Cambridge , 2011 ), 237 –7 Google Scholar .

41 Sauvageot in “Summary Report of the Fourth Meeting,” 23 July 1947, Educ./Com.Exp./S.R.4, File 375:4.A.064.“47,” UNESCO Archives.

42 Jean-Jacques Deheyn in “Summary Report of the Sixth Meeting”; and Jean-Jacques Deheyn, “Note concernant ce problème,” August 1947, File 375:4, UNESCO Archives. On Deheyn see “Liste des experts,” 27 June 1947, UNESCO/Educ./36/1947, File 375:4.A.064.“47,” UNESCO Archives.

43 Wedgwood quoted in House of Commons Debates, Hansard (hereafter H.C. Deb.), 2 June 1937, vol. 324, cols. 169–71. For Wedgwood's interwar comments on English-language education in the British Empire see also H.C. Deb., 13 July 1928, vol. 219, cols. 2671–2, 2676; H.C. Deb., 30 April 1929, vol. 227, cols. 1484–6; H.C. Deb., 26 June 1930, vol. 240, cols. 1471–3; H.C. Deb., 22 April 1932, vol. 264, cols. 1826–8; and H.C. Deb., 25 July 1935, vol. 304, cols. 2097–8. On Wedgwood see Mulvey , Paul , The Political Life of Josiah C. Wedgwood: Land, Liberty and Empire, 1872–1943 ( Woodbridge , 2010 ), 7–12, 71–2, 117 –19 Google Scholar .

44 Koeneke , Rodney , Empires of the Mind: I. A. Richards and Basic English in China, 1929–1979 ( Stanford , 2004 ), 186 –7 Google Scholar ; Gordin, Scientific Babel , 297.

45 F. D. Lugard, “Education in Tropical Africa,” Edinburgh Review , July 1925, reprinted by the Colonial Office, Aug. 1930, CO 879/123/12; The Place of the Vernacular in Native Education (1925), African No. 1110, CO 879/121/4; Whitehead, “The Medium of Instruction in British Colonial Education,” 2–4, 11; Evans, “Macaulay's Minute Revisited,” 279. Lugard was also an influential figure on the League of Nations’ Permanent Mandates Commission in the 1920s and early 1930s. On Lugard at the League see Pedersen , Susan , The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire ( Oxford , 2015 ) CrossRef Google Scholar . On analogies between education in British India and British Africa see, inter alia, Brown , Godfrey N. , “ British Educational Policy in West and Central Africa ,” Journal of Modern African Studies 2 / 3 ( 1964 ) CrossRef Google Scholar , 365–77, at 365; and Evans, “Macaulay's Minute Revisited,” 279.

46 Pedersen, Guardians , 396–99; Klose, “‘Source of Embarrassment’,” 245–6; and Mazower , Mark , No Enchanted Palace: The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations ( Princeton , 2009 ) CrossRef Google Scholar , 150–51.

47 Marcel Destombes, “Mission à New York: Neuvième session du Conseil de Tutelle,” memo to Director General, 25 Sept. 1951, XR/NSGT/Memo 177674, File 375:408.8.A.064.“51,” Part II, UNESCO Archives.

48 Ogden, “Article.”

49 Myers in “Summary Report of the First Meeting.”

50 “Fundamental Education: Common Ground for All Peoples: Chapter V: Suggested Lines of Action,” 21 March 1947, UNESCO/Educ./10/1947, File 375:4, UNESCO Archives.

51 “General Considerations of Language Problems in Fundamental Education.”

52 “Notes for Acting Director General's Opening Speech.”

53 Cooper, “Development, Modernization, and the Social Sciences,” 10, 26, 32–3.

54 Mazower, No Enchanted Palace , chap. 4.

55 UNESCO/CL/489 (circular letter to member states, 1951), File 375:408.8, Part I, UNESCO Archives; “UNESCO Project: The Use of Indigenous Languages in Education: Progress Report: January 1951” (1951), File 375:408.8, Part I, UNESCO Archives; Abid Husain, letter and attached report to A. Barrera Vásquez, 25 April 1951, File 375:408.8.A.064.“51,” Part IA, UNESCO Archives; “Purpose and Scope of the Meeting,” 15 Nov. 1951, UNESCO/EDCH/Meeting, Vern./8, File 375:408.8.A.064.“51,” Part IB, UNESCO Archives; Walter, “UNESCO and Language.”

56 Fox, Language and Development , 33.

57 James E. Ianucci, “English Language Teacher Training Project in Indonesia: A Brief History and Evaluation 1959–67,” Report 006680, Box 300, FA739C, Ford Foundation records (FF), RAC.

58 UN resolutions cited in UNESCO's untitled progress report of 10 July 1951, File 375:408.8, Part I, UNESCO Archives.

59 Unesco's work on vernacular literacy in the early 1950s would be credited when the issue again came to the fore in the more radicalized climate of the 1970s. See Patricia Lee Engle, “The Use of the Vernacular Languages in Education: 1973,” Dec. 1973, Box 184, Report 004048, FA739B; and Melvin J. Fox, “Some Thoughts on Language as a Factor in Basic Education in Africa,” 8 April 1974, Report 008184, Box 348, FA739C. Both in FF, RAC.

60 Walter, “UNESCO and the Teaching of Modern Languages.”

61 Roger Louis , Wm. and Robinson , Ronald , “ The Imperialism of Decolonization ,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 22 / 3 ( 1994 ), 462–511 Google Scholar ; Cooper, “Development, Modernization, and the Social Sciences,” 15–19, 24–7; and Rist , Gilbert , Le développement: Histoire d'une croyance occidentale , rev. 4th edn ( Paris , 2013 ), 131 –97 Google Scholar .

62 [Walter], “UNESCO and Language Teaching”; Walter, “UNESCO and the Teaching of Modern Languages”; Walter, “UNESCO and Language.”

63 [Walter], “UNESCO and Language Teaching.”

64 Matta Akrawi, memo to Lionel Elvin et al., 25 Jan. 1951, File 375:408.8, Part I, UNESCO Archives. When Elvin, then director of UNESCO's Education Department, responded that this was a mere “misunderstanding” and that the conference was not, in fact, dedicated to the teaching of English, Akrawi scribbled dyspeptically, “Not quite a misunderstanding!” Lionel Elvin, memo to Matta Akrawi, 29 Jan. 1951, File 375:408.8, Part I, UNESCO Archives. Akrawi's biography presumably had sensitized him to issues that his British counterparts were inclined to overlook. During the interwar period, Akrawi had spent formative years participating in a student group noted for linking Arabic-language education to political pan-Arabism and anticolonial nationalism. Following Iraq's independence in 1932, Akrawi became a highly placed figure in the Iraqi educational system. On Akrawi see Falb Kalisman , Hilary , “ Bursary Scholars at the American University of Beirut: Living and Practising Arab Unity ,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 42 / 4 ( 2015 ), 599–617 Google Scholar .

65 “Meeting of Experts on the Use in Education of African Languages in Relation to English, Where English Is the Accepted Second Language: Report Presented to the Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization,” 15 Dec. 1952, EJD/PZ, File 375:408.8(6)A0.64(66)“52,” Part II, UNESCO Archives.

66 W. Freeman Twaddell, “U.S. Activities of the Center for Applied Linguistics, 1959–1973,” spring 1973, Report 004959, Box 220, FA739B, FF, RAC; Charles A. Ferguson, “The Role of the Center for Applied Linguistics, 1959–1967” (1967), Folder 3, Box 3, Series II, FA572, FF, RAC.

67 See Jesse MacKnight, letter to William Benton, 26 May 1950, Benton Papers, Box 388, Folder 2; William Benton, letter to Jesse MacKnight, 31 May 1950, Benton Papers, Box 388, Folder 2; Congressional Record proceedings, 1 April 1952, Benton Papers, Box 388, Folder 4; Delegation of the United States of America to the Second Extraordinary Session of the General Conference of UNESCO, “An Appraisal of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization,” 1–4 July 1953, Benton Papers, Box 388, Folder 5; Ray Murphy, letter to Kenneth Holland, 5 Jan. 1955, Benton Papers, Box 388, Folder 5.

68 Herbert J. Abraham, memo to Charles Thomson, 21 Sept. 1951, EDIU/244.910, File 408.3:37, Part I, UNESCO Archives.

69 Francis J. Colligan, letter to I. A. Richards, 13 Sept. 1946, Folder 2795, Box 234, Series 200, RG 1.1, Projects, RF, RAC.

70 Inderjeet Parmar has convincingly described the Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie foundations’ portrayal of themselves as non-state actors as one of the characteristic “fictions” of twentieth-century American philanthropy. Ford's trustees from the early 1950s through the early 1970s included numerous individuals with ties to the National Security Council, the State Department, and the Defense Department, including Robert McNamara and McGeorge Bundy. Parmar, Foundations of the American Century , 3–6, 53–5. On Ford in Indonesia see Parmar, Foundations of the American Century , 124–48.

71 Melvin J. Fox, “The Work of American Foundations in English as a Second Language,” June 1961, Report 002236, Box 91, FA739A, FF, RAC.

72 Melvin J. Fox, memo to John B. Howard, 23 Dec. 1959, folder labeled “Africa—Trip to Africa (Melvin J. Fox)—African Language Training Project and ‘Trip to the Union of South Africa’ Report—Charles Ferguson,” Box 3, Series I, FA608, FF, RAC; Northrup, How English Became the Global Language , 99–100.

73 On the establishment of the USIA see Osgood , Kenneth , Total Cold War: Eisenhower's Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad ( Lawrence , 2006 ) Google Scholar , 46–75, esp. 57–8, 70–71.

74 Parker, The National Interest and Foreign Languages , 59–64. Parker noted that, despite the boost that the Second World War had given to language acquisition research, foreign-language enrollment in American universities had dropped every consecutive year from 1947 to 1953.

75 Watzke , John L. , Lasting Change in Foreign Language Education: A Historical Case for Change in National Policy ( Westport, CT , 2003 ), 45 – 51 Google Scholar ; Parmar, Foundations of the American Century , 186; Fox, Language and Development , 36.

76 Fox, Language and Development , 33–5; USIA annual report numbers cited in Albert H. Marckwardt, “Teaching English as a Foreign Language” (1967), Folder 4, Box 3, Series II, FA572, FF, RAC.

77 “Our History,” CAL website, at www.cal.org/who-we-are/our-history , accessed 2 Feb. 2016.

78 CAL, Second Language Learning as a Factor in National Development in Asia, Africa, and Latin America: Summary Statement and Recommendations of an International Meeting of Specialists Held in London, December 1960 (Washington, DC, 1961), 2. On Walter's connection to Ford and the CAL see CAL, memo to Ford Foundation, 8 Oct. 1959, and Melvin J. Fox, memo to George Gant and John Howard, 27 Jan. 1960, both in folder labeled “Africa—Trip to Africa,” Box 3, Series I, FA608, FF, RAC.

79 On the Development Decade see Rist, Le développement , 167.

80 Heil , Alan L. , Voice of America: A History ( New York , 2003 ), 273 –87 Google Scholar .

81 Quoted in Slotten , Hugh R. , “ Satellite Communications, Globalization, and the Cold War ,” Technology and Culture 43 / 2 ( 2002 ), 315–50, at 336 CrossRef Google Scholar .

82 Wilbur Schramm, “Communication Satellites—Some Social Implications,” 10 Sept. 1965, UNESCO/Spacecom/3, File 629.19: 621.39 MEE, UNESCO Archives.

83 “Report on Survey of U.S. Government English Language Programs for Fiscal Years 1964, 1965 and 1966,” 20 May 1965, and “Peace Corps Volunteers Employed as English Teachers as of March 31, 1965” (1965?), Folder 13, Box 3, Series III, FA548, FF, RAC; “English Language Programs of the Agency for International Development,” Department of State, Agency for International Development, Dec. 1967, at http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/pnaad469.pdf , accessed 8 Feb. 2016; J. M. Cowan, “J. M. Cowan's Visit to Saigon, February 21–25, 1969,” 1969, Report 006678, Box 300, FA739C, FF, RAC.

84 “National Security Action Memorandum No. 332: U.S. Government Policy on English Language Teaching Abroad,” 11 June 1965, Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library website, at www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/nsams/nsam332.asp , accessed 24 July 2013, emphasis in the original. The quoted text is from an unclassified portion of the memo which was intended for public consumption.

85 Alexis Ladas, memo to William Benton, 25 Aug. 1965; and William Benton, memo to Alexis Ladas, 20 Aug. 1965. On Ladas see William Benton, letter to Douglas Batson, 27 Aug. 1965. All in Benton Papers, Box 393, Folder 6.

86 Douglas Batson, letter to William Benton, 16 Aug. 1965, Benton Papers, Box 393, Folder 6.

87 Batson explained that this division of labor was in part an attempt to avoid provoking France over the rise of US power in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. Batson, memo to Benton, 12 May 1965, and Douglas Batson, memo to William Benton, 19 May 1965, Benton Papers, Box 393, Folder 6.

88 Fox, Language and Development , 36–7, 42–3, 67. On English and the World Second Language Survey see, for instance, F. F. Hill, memo to John Howard et al., 2 Dec. 1959 (headed “Copied from Handwritten Notes”), and CAL, memo to Ford Foundation re “Survey of Needs and Resources for Teaching English and Other World Languages,” 8 Oct. 1959, both in folder labeled “Africa—Trip to Africa,” Box 3, Series I, FA608, FF, RAC.

89 On “permanent-effect” versus “stopgap” approaches see Ianucci, “English Language Teacher Training Project in Indonesia”; “Ford Foundation Activities in Teaching English as a Second Language,” Feb. 1964, Folder 2, Box 1, Series I, FA572, FF, RAC; and Harvey P. Hall, memo to J. D. Kingsley, 15 Aug. 1966, Report 009300, Box 386, FA739D, FF, RAC. On the 1970s retrenchment see Melvin Fox, memo to Francis X. Sutton, 15 Dec. 1978, Report 008175, Box 347, FA739C, FF, RAC.

90 “National Security Action Memorandum No. 332.”

91 “English Language Programs of the Agency for International Development.”

92 Fox, Language and Development , 147. On the evolution of the foundation's work see Melvin Fox, memo to F. Champion Ward, 14 Sept. 1964, Folder 12, Box 9, Series IV, FA582; [Francis X. Sutton], “A Gloss on Fox: Some Implications of the Fox Report for Foundation Activities in the Language Field and Proposals for Follow-Up,” 8 Jan. 1968, Report 007118, Box 314, FA739A; Betty Pinto Skolnick, memo to Reuben Frodin, 12 Aug. 1971, Report 006260, Box 280, FA739B; Frank Cawson, “The International Activities of the Center for Applied Linguistics,” 1973, Report 003315, Box 157, FA739B. All in FF, RAC.

93 Interwar restrictions on English teaching in British Africa had prompted one Labour MP to ask, “Is this the new Imperialism, to discourage the tongue of Shakespeare and Milton?” H.C. Deb., 02 July 1928, vol. 219, cols. 952–3.

94 “English Language Programs of the Agency for International Development.”

95 On Huxley's connection to eugenics and his ambiguous antiracism, see Sluga , Glenda , “ UNESCO and the (One) World of Julian Huxley ,” Journal of World History 23 / 3 ( 2010 ), 393 – 418 CrossRef Google Scholar ; Selcer , Perrin , “ Beyond the Cephalic Index: Negotiating Politics to Produce UNESCO's Scientific Statements on Race ,” Current Anthropology 53 / S5 ( 2012 ), S173 – S184 CrossRef Google Scholar ; and Brattain , Michelle , “ Race, Racism, and Antiracism: UNESCO and the Politics of Presenting Science to the Postwar Public ,” American Historical Review 112 / 5 ( 2007 ) CrossRef Google Scholar , 1386–1413.

96 “English Language Programs of the Agency for International Development,” 1; Fox, Language and Development , 147, 150.

97 See, for instance, Latham, Modernization as Ideology , 151–207; and Ekbladh, The Great American Mission , 190–225.

98 Lawrence H. Summers, “What You (Really) Need to Know,” New York Times , 20 Jan. 2012, ED26.

99 Notes one US-based professor of German, students “frequently display an astonishing naïveté when it comes to the internet and its content; they do not question its authority or truthfulness. The speed with which an online service or web tool translates a sentence is sometimes even seen as a mark of quality: The translation must be right—even if the student does not understand it—because the computer provided the result so quickly and without hesitation.” Steding , Sören , “ Machine Translation in the German Classroom: Detection, Reaction, Prevention ,” Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German 42 / 2 ( 2009 ), 178 –89 CrossRef Google Scholar , at 178. Although online translation tools “cultivate an image of automated, frictionless translation,” this image belies the continuing imperfection of machine translation technology, and the translation industry's ongoing reliance on human labor. See Kushner , Scott , “ The Freelance Translation Machine: Algorithmic Culture and the Invisible Industry ,” New Media & Society 15 / 8 ( 2013 ), 1241–58 CrossRef Google Scholar .

100 Gordin, Scientific Babel , 312; “Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World,” Modern Language Association , at www.mla.org/Resources/Research/Surveys-Reports-and-Other-Documents/Teaching-Enrollments-and-Programs/Foreign-Languages-and-Higher-Education-New-Structures-for-a-Changed-World , accessed 12 Feb. 2016.

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• Volume 15, Issue 2
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• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479244317000166

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The Universal Grammar Theory: Noam Chomsky's Contribution to Second Language (SL) Education

2021, The Journal of EFL Education and Research

This paper aims at reflecting the recent development in Second Language (SL) learning through Chomsky"s principles and parameters in Universal Grammar, as many scholars have their opinions on Chomsky"s theory on universal grammar and have their comments on it. Universal Grammar (UG) proposed by Chomsky (1986) has gained a huge popularity in language and linguistics study. The paper discusses the relevance of Universal Grammar to Second Language Acquisition (SLA) from different aspects: accessibility of UG, L1 and L2 acquisition differences, learning models, poverty of the stimulus argument, and debates on principles and parameters in SLA. Then, it addresses the three hypotheses of Universal grammar in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) which focuses on whether adult language learners have access to the principles and parameters of UG in constructing the grammar of a second language. Moreover, the paper investigates shortcomings of UG in application of SLA, and discuss elaborately on the recent challenges that UG faces in the field of Second language Acquisition (SLA).

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The aim of this paper is to convey why Chomsky’s theory of language, namely, Universal Grammar (UG), is stimulating and adventurous and why it has significant consequences for all the people working with language. The goals of the theory are to describe language as a property of the human mind and to explain its source (Cook, 1988a). To achieve these goals, specific proposals are put forward which may not be correct, but at least the theory provides a unified framework within which they may be tested. This study is carried out in order to give basic information about the overall frame work and details of the theory to evaluate its usefulness in the field of first language and second language acquisition.

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Language is a human attribution which allows communication among us. However, how language is acquired is a mystery which several theories have tried to decipher. Noam Chomsky proposed the theory of Universal Grammar which produced a remarkable impact in the study of language acquisition both L1 and L2. The influence has reached other fields such as psychology and computer parsing of language. (Cook & Newson, 2007:1). This essay supports the idea the UG has a major influence in second language acquisition based on the evidence some researchers have found considering that research conducted on UG is more accurate than other kinds of SLA investigation (Krashen, 2009: 260). Nevertheless, this does not mean that UG is the only factor which is involved in second language acquisition but the most significant.

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The first part of this paper discusses the rationale for universal grammar (UG) theory to explain first language acquisition. It also illustrates the issues of language acquisition Chomsky argued which could not be supported by behaviourist theories and shows how Chomsky proposed a solution to this problem through his theoretical model of universal grammar. The next part outlines this theory’s key tenets, arguing that these principles must be an innate endowment of the human mind. Moreover, the study illustrates specific examples of grammatical phenomena that universal grammar seeks to explain. Lastly, it shows that certain distinct grammatical features are linked and that these connections can be explained within the Universal Grammar theoretical framework. The only reasonable explanation for the first language learning needs only limited linguistic exposure to activate them and set criteria for the language being learned for children whose minds have already been wired with essent...

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