LANGUAGE AND GLOBALIZATION

Globalization is a double-edged sword. It has brought about technological improvements in communication, information, transportation resulting to greater economic openness characterized as interdependent and internationalized. However, globalization has created losers as well as winners. The biggest losers are usually those peripheral countries which lack adequate access to basic services like education, among others. Its impact goes beyond economics because it brings about shifts not only in the economic environment but also in political structure and policies. Globalization creates free economic exchange and serves as engine of wealth and new opportunity on a global scale, but it also transmits devastating losses to most peripheral countries (Avila et. al., 2011).

One impact of globalization is its suggestion for uniformity of language (Mojarro, 2015), which is very opposite to Zuckermann's (2015) claim that diversity is aesthetically pleasing. This might hold true to Crystal's (2000) idea that sharing a single language is a guarantor of mutual understanding and peace to a world new of alliances and global solidarity.

This process would lead to the reduction of intergenerational transmission as many parents do not talk to their children in their ancestral mother tongue, as in the case of English being used as language of business (Horak, 2009). Because children do not use the first language that much, there is a tendency of the dominant language to take over the minority language resulting to language endangerment (Ethnologue, 2015).

Learning the mother tongue among children in their school years is very important because it provides children with self-confidence in their own identity (Jhingran, 2009 and Kirkpatrick, 2010). Kindell (2015) pointed out that people tend to shift from their mother tongue in favor to another dominant or killer language which offers more power or opportunities.

This shift in the richly multilingual contexts of ASEAN, of which Philippines is a member-state, threatens the long-term future of many local languages (Kirkpatrick, 2010). Crystal (2000) said that each language reflects a unique encapsulation and interpretation of human existence. Zuckermann (2015) added that languages are essential blocks of community, identity and authority. However, cultures at the periphery have been marginalized which would lead to cultural disruptions and language loss caused by this globalization of dominant cultures.

Language is an integral part of society because it is very fundamental to cultural identity. It is the mouth of the people. Ethically, language is a repository of ideas, values and experience (Zuckermann, 2015). To consider Russell Hoban's (1985) definition of language, it is an archaeological vehicle which is full of the remnants of dead and living parts, lost and buried civilizations and technologies. Crystal (2000) considers language as a tool of communication, thus language as what Horak (2009) pointed out, would not exist without speakers. McMahon (1994) claimed that language becomes a living entity because speakers use it for the purpose of communication.

With the globalization of dominant cultures, however, languages in nearly every part of the world are becoming extinct because people tend to shift from their mother tongue in favor to another dominant language (Kindell, 2015). Fishman (1991) defined language shift as a gradual, slow and cumulative process, characterized as the original language loses its power in favor to the newly introduced one. Accordingly, Horak (2009) mentioned that, once language shift has begun, the process is very difficult to stop.

The gradual process of language death involves a transfer of allegiance of the first language to the second or dominant language as product of which the indigenous population has become bilingual.

Why then languages die? According to Crystal (2000), language dies when nobody speaks it anymore. If language would not be used in communication, it is considered to be dead, for a language is really alive only as long as there is someone to speak it to. Language is a tool of communication. Therefore, only one speaker makes communication impossible resulting to language death. This was supported by Brenzinger (1992) who said that a language is considered to be extinct when there is no longer speech community using the language. But Horak (2009) argued that one last speaker of the language is enough to pay on his linguistic knowledge to another human being. With that being said, there is only restrictions as to language function but the language still exists. The latter concluded that language death is typically a phase of linguistic evolution claiming that a language can die even in a civilized society.

Meanwhile, Sasse (1992) proposed three phases of language death: language shift, language decay and language death. Language shift is a change in linguistic attitude in the indigenous population's minds towards their own and the new language. The former mentioned that, once a new language becomes dominant in a certain speech community, the indigenous one is potentially endangered.

Krauss (2006) classified languages in three levels: languages that are safe, endangered or extinct. The former claimed that if a language is no longer learned as a mother tongue by children, it is said to be moribund, characterized as a language which lacks intergenerational transmission and becomes very vulnerable to being endangered or extinct.

Avila et. al. (2011) mentioned that globalization drives changes in political structure and processes. This might be true to McMahon's (1994) claim that language is a socio-political matter, not a linguistic one at all, emphasizing that languages do not change as a whole, but rather as to elements in a given period of time as changed by speakers of the language. The latter claimed further that there is really a process of linguistic change which might happen within the language itself or contact between languages.

Hinton and Hale (2001) defined language loss when there is no speaker left who knows it, or the language speakers no longer have the domains to use the language. Mojarro (2015) said that one prejudice regarding limited language use is that many consider indigenous languages as primitive, but Crystal (2000) strongly argued that there is no such thing as a primitive language because every language is capable of great beauty and power of expression.  Hinton and Hale (2001) further believed that language loss is happening rapidly as caused by the process of communication, globalization, displacement and environmental destruction where people voluntarily or involuntarily abandon their language as their communities are likewise affected. This claim supports the previous statement of Crystal (2000) who said that language endangerment can be attributed to major conditions such as physical threatening caused by natural disasters like earthquakes, tsunamis, floods or volcanic eruptions; economic situation in a form of migration; civil wars; among others.

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