Page 151 - THE MELANESIA DIASPORA FILE CETAK ISI 10022017

cultural patterns. For example, the concept of the family and social relationships can be
revealed by looking at personal pronouns. Some cultures have a highly elaborated set
of familial and social relations while others are limited to the nuclear family. Research
into universal properties in human language and culture is part of the wider study of the
evolution of human cognition. They are therefore able to give us insights in the systems
that link human language with mind and with culture. Languages encode cognitive and
cultural perspectives of our view of the world.

These points are part of the argument about why we should care about language
endangerement. The next question is why it is happening. The scale of the problem has been
highlighted by the United Nations. This is a break in the age old chain of cultural transmission
whereby the younger generation learns culture and language from their parents. This chain is
now broken. According to UNESCO only around 30% of the world’s families are successfully
transmitting their language to their children (Barreña et al., 2000: 328-330). 70% of families
are experiencing obstacles to successfully passing on their language to their children. The
reasons for this are complex and by no means universal. A number of types of phenomena
have been identified. These include natural disasters such as tsunamis or earthquakes, man
made disasters and conflict, culturally related reasons, and government policies. We can
also see that the failure to pass on a language to the next generation operates in different
contexts in multilingual societies where language choice is required. For example, in families
living in cities where a mother and father come from different linguistic groups, the children
may not pick up either language preferring instead to use a majority language or a national
language. In education, government policies may not give young students the option of
learning in their mother tongue. Government policies may exclude minority groups and
restrict options for using their language for political reasons. Attitudes can play a part too.
Where a large, dominant group lives by a smaller, less powerful group, attitudes towards
each other, positive or negative can play a part. However, beyond all of these we also find the
impact of globalization, climate change and capitalism. Small communities are increasingly
finding themselves the losers in the competition for land and resources. Mining, fishing, and
other activities, conducted by governments and global corporations, are all too often a zero
sum game where everyone knows that the larger, more powerful will win and the small, local
communities will lose out.
The size of these communities can also be a factor in language vitality. Many of them
are extremely small, with less than a thousand speakers. Sizes such as these can make them

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