Date:  Wed, 13 Sep 1995 15:05:30 CST

From:  salikoko mufwene <mufw[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MIDWAY.UCHICAGO.EDU>

Subject: Re: FOR English Only



Natalie and Tom:

 I am glad I asked the question about "viable communication," because I

realize now that you both did not assume the same thing, at least based on

the answers I just read. In concession to Tom, I should have asked the

question in terms of "scale of communication," not "level of communication."

Natalie, as you answer the question in terms of

<<communication sufficient to maintain some sort of national identity,>>

should I assume that mutilingual nations would have identity problems?

 But I'll go back to Tom's reply, very briefly, the need for having a common

language for communication at the level of a few individuals does not

translate empirically into the need for one single nationwide language for

communication. There are a host of sociohistorical factors to take into

account in this case. Besides, there are problems of communication (mutual

intelligibility) in monolingual countries. Even here in the United States, I

have witnessed native speakers of English failing to communicate successful

in their own native English! You may as well follow some incidents on this

list too, but the experiences I referred to involve nonlinguists.

Sali.

***********************************************************************

Salikoko S. Mufwene

University of Chicago

Dept. of Linguistics

1010 East 59th Street

Chicago, IL 60637

s-mufwene[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uchicago.edu

312-702-8531; fax: 312-702-9861