Towards a general theory of linguistic diversity

Abstract

The world’s languages are commonly categorised in terms of available language technologies such as speech recognition and machine translation. On this view, "under-resourced languages" suffer from language barriers which cut people off from markets, healthcare, human rights, and AI. The "solution" is more funding for language technologies, opening the way to a utopia of digital language equality and AI-enabled mobility. Yet the world’s linguistic diversity is not a set of language objects to be pushed up a cline from emerging to thriving. It consists of polyglossic communities who have long used vernaculars for local functions and dominant languages for external functions. I present a new theory of linguistic diversity which places the world of vernaculars alongside the world of institutional languages, and articulates diverse language technology agendas that lie within and between these worlds.

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