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Sunday, July 10, 2022

Marxist humanism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Marxist humanism is an international body of thought and political action rooted in an interpretation of the works of Karl Marx. It is an investigation into "what human nature consists of and what sort of society would be most conducive to human thriving" from a critical perspective rooted in Marxist philosophy. Marxist humanists argue that Marx himself was concerned with investigating similar questions.

Marxist humanism was born in 1932 with the publication of Marx's Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and reached a degree of prominence in the 1950s and 1960s. Marxist humanists contend that there is continuity between the early philosophical writings of Marx, in which he develops his theory of alienation, and the structural description of capitalist society found in his later works such as Capital. They hold that it is necessary to grasp Marx's philosophical foundations to understand his later works properly.

Contrary to the official dialectical materialism of the Soviet Union and to interpretations of Marx rooted in the structural Marxism of Louis Althusser, Marxist humanists argue that Marx's work was an extension or transcendence of enlightenment humanism. Where other Marxist philosophies see Marxism as a natural science, Marxist humanism reaffirms the doctrine of "man is the measure of all things" – that humans are essentially different to the rest of the natural order and should be treated so by Marxist theory.

Origins

The beginnings of Marxist humanism lie with the publication of György Lukács's History and Class Consciousness and Karl Korsch's Marxism and Philosophy in 1923. In these books, Lukács and Korsch proffer a Marxism that emphasizes the Hegelian basis of Karl Marx's thought. Marxism is not simply a theory of political economy that improves on its bourgeois predecessors, nor a scientific sociology, akin to the natural sciences. Marxism is primarily a critique – a self-conscious transformation of society.

György Lukács

Korsch's book underscores Marx's doctrine of the unity of theory and practice, viewing socialist revolution as the "realization of philosophy". The most important essay in Lukács's collection introduces the concept of "reification" – the transformation of human properties into the properties of man-produced things which have become independent of Man and govern his life, and conversely the transformation of humans into thing-like beings. Lukács argues that elements of this concept are implicit in the analysis of commodity fetishism found in Marx's magnum opus Capital. Bourgeois society loses sight of the role of human action in the creation of social meaning. It thinks value is immanent in things and regards persons as commodities.

The writings of Antonio Gramsci are also extremely important in the development of a humanist understanding of Marxism. Insisting on Marx's debt to Hegel, Gramsci sees Marxism as a "philosophy of praxis" and an "absolute historicism" that transcends traditional materialism and traditional idealism.

The first publication of Marx's Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts in 1932 greatly changed the reception of his work. This early work of Marx – written in 1844, when Marx was twenty-five or twenty-six years old – situated his reading of political economy, his relationship to the philosophies of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Ludwig Feuerbach, and his views on communism, within a new theoretical framework. In the Manuscripts, Marx borrows philosophical terminology from Hegel and Feuerbach to posit a critique of capitalist society based in "alienation". Through his own activity, Man becomes alien from his human possibilities: to the products of his own activity, to the nature in which he lives, to other human beings and to himself. The concept is not merely descriptive, it is a call for de-alienation through radical change of the world. On publication, the importance of this work was recognized by Marxists such as Raya Dunayevskaya, Herbert Marcuse and Henri Lefebvre. In the period after the Second World War, the texts were translated into Italian and discussed by Galvano Della Volpe. The philosophers Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Paul Sartre were also drawn to Marxism by the Manuscripts at this time. In 1961, a volume containing an introduction by Erich Fromm was published in the US.

As they provided a missing link between the Hegelian philosophical humanism of Marx's early writings and the economics of the later Marx, Marx's Grundrisse were also an important source for Marxist humanism. This 1,000-page collection of Marx's working notes for Capital was first published in Moscow in 1939 and became available in an accessible addition in 1953. Several analysts (most notably Roman Rozdolsky) have commented that the Grundrisse shows the role played by the early Marx's concerns with alienation and the Hegelian concept of dialectic in the formation of his magnum opus.

Currents

In the aftermath of the occupation of France and the Second World War, the independent leftist journal Les Temps modernes was founded in 1946. Among its original editorial board were the existentialist philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. While both lent support to the politics and tactics of the French Communist Party and the Soviet Union during this period, they concurrently attempted to formulate a phenomenological and existential Marxism that opposed the Stalinist version. In their view, the failure of the Western Communist Parties to lead successful revolutions and the development of an authoritarian state structure in the Soviet Union were both connected to the "naturalism" and "scientism" of the official orthodox Marxist theory. Orthodox Marxism is not a theory of revolutionary self-emancipation but a self-proclaimed science that imposes a direction upon history from above in the name of irrefutable "iron laws". Against this, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty argued for a subject-centered view of history that emphasized the lived experience of historical actors as the source of cognition.

In 1939, Henri Lefebvre, then a member of the French Communist Party, published Dialectical Materialism. This book, written in 1934–5, advanced a reconstruction of Marx's oeuvre in the light of the 1844 Manuscripts. Lefebvre argued here that Marx's dialectic was not a "Dialectics of Nature" (as set forth by Friedrich Engels) but was instead based on concepts of alienation and praxis. In the wake of the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian Uprising of 1956, Lefebvre – together with Kostas Axelos, Jean Duvignaud, Pierre Fougeyrollas and Edgar Morin – founded the journal Arguments. This publication became the center of a Marxist humanist critique of Stalinism. In his theory of alienation, Lefebvre drew not only from the Manuscripts, but also from Sartre, to proffer a critique that encompassed the styles of consumption, culture, systems of meaning and language under capitalism.

Starting in the late 1950s, Roger Garaudy, for many years the chief philosophical spokesman of the French Communist Party, offered a humanistic interpretation of Marx stemming from Marx's early writings that called for dialogue between Communists and existentialists, phenomenologists and Christians.

The period following the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953 saw a number of movements for liberalization in Eastern Europe. Following Nikita Khrushchev's secret speech, where he denounced Stalinism, Marx's 1844 Manuscripts were used as the basis for a new "socialist humanism" in countries such as Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia. The Petofi Circle, which included some of Lukács's disciples, was a center of what was termed "revisionism" in Hungary. In 1959, the Polish writer Leszek Kołakowski published an article "Karl Marx and the Classical Definition of Truth" that drew a sharp distinction between the theory of knowledge found in the works of the young Marx and the theory found in Engels and Lenin. This challenge was taken up by Adam Schaff, a member of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party, and expanded into an investigation into the persistence of alienation in socialist societies. The Czechoslovak Karel Kosik also began the critique of communist dogmatism that would develop into his Dialectics of the Concrete, and would eventually land him in jail.

This period also saw the formation of a humanist Marxism by Yugoslav philosophers Mihailo Marković and Gajo Petrović that would come to act as the basis of the Praxis School. From 1964 to 1975, this group published a philosophical journal, Praxis, and organized annual philosophical debates on the island of Korčula. They concentrated on themes such as alienation, reification and bureaucracy.

In Britain, the New Left Review was founded from an amalgamation of two earlier journals, The New Reasoner and the Universities and Left Review, in 1959. Its original editorial team – E. P. Thompson, John Saville and Stuart Hall – were committed to a socialist humanist perspective until their replacement by Perry Anderson in 1962.

Philosophy

Marxist humanism opposes the philosophy of "dialectical materialism" that was orthodox among the Soviet-aligned Communist Parties. Following the synthesis of Hegel's dialectics and philosophical materialism in Friedrich Engels's Anti-Dühring, the Soviets saw Marxism as a theory not just of society but of reality as a whole. Engels's book is not a work of science, but of what he calls "natural philosophy". Nonetheless, he claims that discoveries within the sciences tend to confirm the scientific nature of his theory. This world-view is instantiated within both the natural and social sciences.

Marxist humanists reject an understanding of society based on natural science, asserting the centrality and distinctiveness of people and society. Marxist humanism views Marxist theory as not primarily scientific but philosophical. Social science is not another natural science and people and society are not instantiations of universal natural processes. Rather, people are subjects – centers of consciousness and values – and science is an embedded part of the totalizing perspective of humanist philosophy. Echoing the inheritance of Marx's thought from German Idealism, Marxist humanism holds that reality does not exist independently of human knowledge, but is partly constituted by it. Because human social practice has a purposive, transformative character, it requires a mode of understanding different from the detached, empirical observation of the natural sciences. A theoretical understanding of society should instead be based in empathy with or participation in the social activities it investigates.

Alienation

In line with this, Marxist humanism treats alienation as one of Marxism's central concepts. In his early writings, the young Marx advances a critique of modern society on the grounds that it impedes human flourishing. His theory of alienation suggests a dysfunctional or hostile relation between entities that naturally belong in harmony with one another – an artificial separation of one entity from another with which it had been previously and properly conjoined. The concept has "subjective" and "objective" variants. Alienation is "subjective" when human individuals feel "estranged" or do not feel at home in the modern social world. Individuals are objectively alienated when they do not develop their essential human capacities. For Marx, objective alienation is the cause of subjective alienation: individuals experience their lives as lacking meaning or fulfilment because society does not promote the deployment of their human capacities.

Marxist humanism views alienation as the guiding idea of both Marx's early writings and his later works. According to this school of thought, the central concepts of Capital cannot be fully and properly understood without reference to this seminal theme. Communism is not merely a new socioeconomic formation that will supersede the present one, but the re-appropriation of Man's life and the abolition of alienation.

In the state

The earliest appearance of this concept in Marx's corpus is the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right from 1843. Drawing a contrast between the forms of community in the ancient and medieval worlds and the individualism of modern civil society, Marx here characterizes the modern social world as "atomistic". Modern civil society does not sustain the individual as a member of a community. Where in medieval society people are motivated by the interest of their estate, an unimpeded individualism is the principle that underpins modern social life. Marx's critique does not rest with civil society: he also holds that the modern political state is distinguished by its "abstract" character. While the state acknowledges the communal dimension of human flourishing, its existence has a "transcendental remoteness" separate from the "real life" of civil society. The state resolves the alienation of the modern world, but in an inadequate manner.

Marx credits Hegel with significant insight into both the basic structure of the modern social world and its disfigurement by alienation. Hegel believes alienation will no longer exist when the social world objectively facilitates the self-realization of individuals, and individuals subjectively understand that this is so. For Hegel, objective alienation is already non-existent, as the modern social world does facilitate individuals' self-realization. However, individuals still find themselves in a state of subjective alienation. Hegel wishes not to reform or change the institutions of the modern social world, but to change the way in which society is understood by its members. Marx shares Hegel's belief that subjective alienation is widespread but denies that the rational or modern state enables individuals to actualize themselves. Marx instead takes subjective alienation to indicate that objective alienation has not been overcome.

In Bauer

The most well-known metaphor in Marx's Critique – that of religion as the opium of the people – is derived from the writings of the theologian Bruno Bauer. Bauer's primary concern is religious alienation. Bauer views religion as a division in Man's consciousness. Man suffers from the illusion that religion exists apart from and independent of his own consciousness, and that he himself is dependent on his own creation. Religious beliefs become opposed to consciousness as a separate power. A religious consciousness cannot exist without this breaking up or tearing apart of consciousness: religion deprives Man of his own attributes and places them in a heavenly world. The Gospel narrative contains no historical truth – it is an expression of a transient stage in the historical development of self-consciousness. Christianity was of service to self-consciousness in awakening a consciousness of values that belong to every human individual, but it also created a new servitude. Self-consciousness makes itself into an object, a thing, loses control of itself, and feels itself to be nothing before an opposing power.

Since religious belief is the work of a divided mind, it stands in contradiction to itself: the Gospels contradict each other and the world; they contain dogmas so far removed from common sense that they can be understood only as mysteries. The God that men worship is a subhuman God – their own imaginary, inflated and distorted reflection. The task of the present phase of human history is to liberate Man's spirit from the bonds of Christian mythology, free the state from religion, and thereby restore to Man his alienated essence.

In the Critique, Marx adopts Bauer's criticism of religion and applies this method to other fields. Marx sees Man's various alienations as peels around a genuine center. Religion is at once both the symptom of a deep social malaise and a protest against it. The criticism of religion leads to the criticism of other alienations, which must be dealt with in the same way. The influence of Bauer follows Marx through all his later criticism: this is most visible in the many places where Marx establishes an economic point by reference to a religious analogy.

In Hegel

In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx further develops his critique of Hegel. Marx here praises Hegel's dialectic for its view of labor as an alienating process: alienation is an historical stage that must be passed through for the development and deployment of essential human powers. It is an essential characteristic of finite mind (Man) to produce things, to express itself in objects, to objectify itself in physical things, social institutions and cultural products. Every objectification is of necessity an instance of alienation: the produced objects become alien to the producer. Humanity creates itself by externalizing its own essence, developing through a process of alienation alternating with transcendence of that alienation.

For Hegel, alienation is the state of consciousness as it acquaints itself with the external, objective, phenomenal world. Hegel believes that reality is Spirit realizing itself. Spirit's existence is constituted only in and through its own productive activity. In the process of realizing itself, Spirit produces a world that it initially believes to be external, but gradually comes to understand is its own production. All that exists is the Absolute Spirit (Absolute Mind, Absolute Idea or God). The Absolute is not a static or timeless entity but a dynamic Self, engaged in a cycle of alienation and de-alienation. Spirit becomes alienated from itself in nature and returns from its self-alienation through the finite Mind, Man. Human history is a process of de-alienation, consisting in the constant growth of Man's knowledge of the Absolute. Conversely, human history is also the development of the Absolute's knowledge of itself: the Absolute becomes self-aware through Man. Man is a natural being and is thus a self-alienated Spirit. But Man is also an historical being, who can achieve adequate knowledge of the Absolute, and is thus capable of becoming a de-alienated being.

Marx criticizes Hegel for understanding labor as "abstract mental labour". Hegel equates Man with self-consciousness and sees alienation as constituted by objectivity. Consciousness emancipates itself from alienation by overcoming objectivity, recognizing that what appears as an external object is a projection of consciousness itself. Hegel sees freedom as consisting in men's becoming fully self-conscious and understanding that their environment and culture are emanations from Spirit. Marx rejects the notion of Spirit, believing that Man's ideas, though important, are by themselves insufficient to explain social and cultural change. In Hegel, Man's integration with nature takes places on a spiritual level and is thus, in Marx's view, an abstraction and an illusion.

In Feuerbach

The main influence on Marx's thinking in this regard is Ludwig Feuerbach, who in his Essence of Christianity aims to overcome the harm and distress of the separation of individuals from their essential human nature. Feuerbach believes the alienation of modern individuals is caused by their holding false beliefs about God. People misidentify as an objective being what in actuality is a man-made projection of their own essential predicates.

For Feuerbach, Man is not a self-alienated God; God is self-alienated Man. God is Man's essence abstracted, absolutized and estranged from Man. Man creates the idea of God by gathering the best features of his human nature – his goodness, knowledge and power – glorifying them, and projecting them into a beyond. Man is alienated from himself not because he refuses to recognize nature as a self-alienated form of God, but because he creates, and puts above himself, an imagined alien higher being and bows before him as a slave. Christian belief entails the sacrifice, the practical denial or repression, of essential human characteristics. Liberation will come when people recognize what God really is and, through a community that subjects human essence to no alien limitation, reclaim the goodness, knowledge and power they have projected heavenward.

This critique extends beyond religion, as Feuerbach argues in his Theses on the Reform of Philosophy that Hegelian philosophy is itself alienated. Hegel regards alienation as affecting thought or consciousness and not humanity in its material being. For Hegel, concrete, finite existence is merely a reflection of a system of thought or consciousness. Hegel starts and ends with the infinite. The finite, Man, is present as only a phase in the evolution of a human spirit, the Absolute. In opposition to this, Feuerbach argues that Man is alienated because he mediates a direct relationship of sensuous intuition to concrete reality through religion and philosophy. By recognizing that his relationship to nature is instead one of immediate unity, Man can attain a "positive humanism" that is more than just a denial of religion.

In work

Following Feuerbach, Marx places the earthly reality of Man in the center of this picture. Where Hegel sees labor as spiritual activity, Marx sees labor as physical interchange with nature: in nature, Man creates himself and creates nature. Where Hegel identifies human essence with self-consciousness, Marx articulates a concept of species-being (Gattungswesen), according to which Man's essential nature is that of a free producer, freely reproducing his own conditions of life.

Man's nature is to be his own creator, to form and develop himself by working on and transforming the world outside him in cooperation with his fellow men. Man should be in control of this process but in modern conditions Man has lost control of his own evolution. Where land-ownership is subject to the laws of a market economy, human individuals do not fulfill themselves through productive activity. A worker's labor, his personal qualities of muscle and brain, his abilities and aspirations, his sensuous life-activity, appear to him as things, commodities to be bought and sold like any other. Much as Bauer and Feuerbach see religion as an alienating invention of the human mind, so does Marx believe the modern productive process to reduce the human being to the status of a commodity. In religion, God holds the initiative and Man is in a state of dependence. In economics, money moves humans around as though they were objects instead of the reverse.

Marx claims that human individuals are alienated in four ways:

  1. From their products
  2. From their productive activity
  3. From other individuals
  4. From their own nature.

Firstly, the product of a worker's labor confronts him "as an alien object that has power over him". A worker has bestowed life on an object that now confronts him as hostile and alien. The worker creates an object, which appears to be his property. However, he now becomes its property. When he externalizes his life in an object, a worker's life belongs to the object and not to himself; his nature becomes the attribute of another person or thing. Where in earlier historical epochs, one person ruled over another, now the thing rules over the person, the product over the producer.

Secondly, the worker relates to the process by which this product is created as something alien that does not belong to him. His work typically does not fulfill his natural talents and spiritual goals and is experienced instead as "emasculation".

Thirdly, the worker experiences mutual estrangement – alienation from other individuals. Each individual regards others as a means to his own end. Concern for others exists mainly in the form of a calculation about the effect those others have on his own narrow self-interest.

Fourthly, the worker experiences self-estrangement: alienation from his human nature. Because work is a means to survival only, the worker does not fulfill his human need for self-realization in productive activity. The worker is only at ease in his animal functions of eating, drinking and procreating. In his distinctly human functions, he is made to feel like an animal. Modern labor turns the worker's essence as a producer into something "alien".

Marx mentions other features of alienated labor: overwork, or the amount of time that the modern worker has to spend engaged in productive activity; "more and more one-sided" development of the worker, or the lack of variety in his activity; the machine-like character of labor and the intellectual stunting that results from the neglect of mental skills in productive activity.

The capitalist does not escape the process of alienation. Where the worker is reduced to an animal condition, the capitalist is reduced to an abstract money-power. His human qualities are transformed into a personification of the power of money.

In contrast to this negative account of alienated labor, Marx's Notes on James Mill offer a positive description of unalienated labor. Marx here claims that in self-realizing work, one's personality would be made objective in one's product and that one would enjoy contemplating that feature in the object one produces. As one has expressed one's talents and abilities in the productive process, the activity is authentic to one's character. It ceases to be an activity one loathes. Marx further claims that one gains immediate satisfaction from the use and enjoyment of one's product – the satisfaction arising from the knowledge of having produced an object that corresponds to the needs of another human being. One can be said to have created an object that corresponds to the needs of another's essential nature. One's productive activity is a mediator between the needs of another person and the entire species. Because individuals play this essential role in the affirmation of each other's nature, Marx suggests that this confirms the "communal" character of human nature.

To overcome alienation and allow humankind to realize its species-being, it is not enough, as Hegel and Feuerbach believe, to simply grasp alienation. It is necessary to transform the world that engenders alienation: the wage-labor system must be transcended, and the separation of the laborer from the means of labor abolished. This is not the task of a solitary philosophical critic, but of class struggle. The historic victory of capitalism in the middle of the 19th century has made alienation universal, since everything enters in to the cycle of exchange, and all value is reduced to commodity value. In a developed capitalist society, all forms of alienation are comprised in the worker's relation to production. All possibilities of the worker's very being are linked to the class struggle against capital. The proletariat, which owns nothing buts its labor power, occupies a position radically different to all other classes. The liberation of the working class will therefore be the liberation of mankind.

This emancipation is not simply the abolition of private property. Marx differentiates his communism from the primitive communism that seeks to abolish everything that cannot be the property of all. For Marx, this would be the generalization of alienation and the abolition of talent and individuality – tantamount to abolishing civilization. Marx instead sees communism as a positive abolition of private property, where Man recovers his own species-being, and Man's activity is no longer opposed to him as something alien. This is a direct affirmation of humanity: just as atheism ceases to be significant when the affirmation of Man is no longer dependent on the negation of God, communism is a direct affirmation of Man independent of the negation of private property.

In division of labor

In the German Ideology, Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels provide an account of alienation as deriving from division of labor. Alienation is said to arise from improvements in tools, which in turn lead to commerce. Man transforms objects produced by Man into commodities – vehicles for abstract exchange-value. Division of labor and exchange relations subsume individuals in classes, subordinating them to forces to which they have no choice but to comply. Alienated processes appear to individuals as if they were natural processes. Physical and mental work are also separated from each other, giving rise to self-deluded ideologists who believe their thoughts have an inherent validity and are not dictated by social needs.

Marx and Engels here attack Feuerbach for advancing an "essentialist" account of human nature that reduces real historical men to a philosophical category. They argue that it is not a philosophical concept ("Man") that makes history, but real individuals in definite historical conditions.

In economics

In the Grundrisse, Marx continues his discussion of the problem of alienation in the context of political economy. Here, the central themes of the 1844 Manuscripts are dealt with in a much more sophisticated manner. Marx builds on his earlier conception of Man as a productive, object-creating being. The concepts found in Marx's earlier work – alienation, objectification, appropriation, Man's dialectical relationship to nature and his generic or social nature – all recur in the Grundrisse.

Marx views political economy as a reflection of the alienated consciousness of bourgeois society. It mystifies human reality by transforming the production of commodities into "objective" laws which independently regulate human activity. The human subject is made into the object of his own products. A key difference between the Grundrisse and the Manuscripts is Marx's starting with an analysis of production, rather than the mechanisms of exchange. The production of objects must be emancipated from the alienated form given to it by bourgeois society. Moreover, Marx no longer says that what a worker sells is his labor, but rather his labor-power.

The discussion of alienation in the Grundrisse is also more firmly rooted in history. Marx argues that alienation did not exist in earlier periods – primitive communism – where wealth was still conceived as residing in natural objects and not man-made commodities. However, such societies lacked the creation of objects by purposive human activity. They cannot be a model for a fully-developed communism that realizes human potentiality. Capital is an "alienating" force, but it has fulfilled a very positive function. It has developed the productive forces enormously, has replaced natural needs by ones historically created and has given birth to a world market. Nonetheless, Marx sees capitalism as transitory: free competition will inevitably hinder the development of capitalism.

The key to understanding the ambivalent nature of capitalism is the notion of time. On the one hand, the profits of capitalism are built on the creation of surplus work-time, but on the other the wealth of capitalism has emancipated Man from manual labor and provided him increasing access to free time. Marx criticizes political economy for its division of Man's time between work and leisure. This argument misunderstands the nature of human activity. Labor is not naturally coercive. Rather, the historical conditions in which labor is performed frustrate human spontaneity. Work should not be a mere means for Man's existence, it should become the very contents of his life.

In property

The Grundrisse also continues the discussion of private property that Marx began in the German Ideology. Marx's views on property stand in contrast to those of Hegel, who believes that property realizes human personality through objectification in the external world. For Marx, property is not the realization of personality but its negation. The possession of property by one person necessarily entails its non-possession by another. Property is thus not to be assured to all, but to be abolished.

The first form of property, according to Marx, is tribal property. Tribal property originates in the capacity of a human group to gain possession of land. Tribal property precedes the existence of permanent settlement and agriculture. The act of possession is made possible by the prior existence of group cohesion, i.e. a social, tribal organization. Thus, property does not pre-date society but results from it. An individual's relation to property is mediated through membership of the group. It is a form of unalienated property that realizes Man's positive relationship to his fellow tribesmen. However, this relationship limits the individual's power to establish a self-interest distinct from the general interest of society. This primitive type of common ownership disappears with the development of agriculture.

The unity of the individual and society is preserved by more complex societies in two distinct forms: oriental despotism and the classical polis. In oriental despotism, the despot personifies society – all property belongs to him. In the polis, the basic form of property is public. Economic activity depends on community-oriented considerations. Political rights depend on participation in common ownership of land. Agriculture is considered morally and publicly superior to commerce. Public agricultural policy is judged on its ability to produce more patriotic citizens, rather than economic considerations. Alienation between the public and private sphere does not exist in the polis.

Marx does not idealize the polis or call for its restoration. Its foundation on naturalistic matter is specific and limited. Marx opposes to this the universality of capital. Capital is objectified human labor: on the one hand it indicates hidden human potentialities but on the other its appearance is accompanied by alienation. Capitalism develops a kind of property free from social limitations and considerations. Concurrently, capitalism ends individual private property as traditionally conceived, in that it divorces the producer from the ownership of the means of production. Such property is at the exclusive disposition of its owner. Yet, the development of capitalist society also entails more complex production, requiring combined efforts that cannot be satisfied by individual property.

In commodity fetishism

To make a fetish of something, or fetishize it, is to invest it with powers it does not in itself have. In Capital. Volume 1, Marx argues that the false consciousness of human beings in relation to their social existence arises from the way production is organized in commodity society. He calls this illusion "commodity fetishism".

The production of a product as a value is a phenomenon specific to market economies. Whereas in other economies, products have only use-value, in market economies products have both use-value and exchange-value. Labor that produces use-value is concrete, or qualitatively differentiated: tailoring, weaving, mining, etc. Labor productive of exchange-value is abstract, just a featureless proportion of the total labor of society. In such production, the labor of persons takes the form of the exchange-value of things. The time taken to produce a commodity takes the form of the exchange-value of the commodity. The measure that originally relates to the life process itself is thus introduced into the products of labor. The mutual relations of humans as exchangers of goods take on the form of relations between objects. These objects appear to have mysterious qualities which of themselves make them valuable, as though value were a natural, physical property of things. While commodities do indeed have exchange-value, they do not have this value autonomously, but as a result of the way labor is organized. By failing to understand this process wherein social relations masquerade as things or relations between things, humans involuntarily accept that their own qualities, abilities and efforts do not belong to themselves but are inherent in the objects they create.

The labor bestowed upon commodities is what constitutes their value, but it does not appear to do so. Commodity fetishism, or the appearance that the products of labor have value in and of themselves, arises from the particular social form within which commodity production takes place – the market society. Here, the social character of production is expressed only in exchange, not in production itself. In other societies – primitive communism, the patriarchal tribe, feudalism, the future communist society – producers are directly integrated with one another by custom, directive, or plan. In commodity society, producers connect mediately, not as producers but as marketeers. Their products do not have a social form prior to their manifestations as commodities, and it is the commodity form alone that connects producers. While the relations between commodities are immediately social, the relations between producers are only indirectly so. Because persons lack direct social relations, it appears to them that they labor because their products have value. However, their products in fact have value because labor has been bestowed on them. Men relate to each other through the value they create. This value regulates their lives as producers, yet they do not recognize their own authorship of this value.

Marx does not use the term alienation here, but the description is the same as in his earlier works, as is the analogy with religion that he owes to Feuerbach. In religious fetishism an activity of thought, a cultural process, vests an object with apparent power. While the object does not really acquire the power mentally referred to it, if a culture makes a fetish of an object, its members come to perceive it as endowed with the power. Fetishism is the inability of human beings to see their products for what they are. Rather than wielding his human power, Man becomes enslaved by his own works: political institutions appear to have autonomy, turning them into instruments of oppression; scientific development and the organization of labor, improved administration and multiplication of useful products are transformed into quasi-natural forces and turned against Man.

A particular expression of commodity fetishism is the reification of labor power, in which human persons appear in the context of labor as commodities bought and sold on the market according to the laws of value. Wage-labor, wherein a class of wage-earners sells its labor power to an owner of the means of production, is the characteristic feature of capitalism. Capitalist profit finds it origin in there being a commodity whose use-value is a source of value, but which creates exchange-value when its use-value is consumed. This commodity is labor power. Like any other commodity, the value of labor power is determined by the amount of labor time necessary to reproduce it. Labor power is reproduced through maintaining the worker in a condition in which he is able to work and to rear a fresh generation of workers. The value of labor power is thus the value of the products necessary to keep the laborer and his children alive and able-bodied. This is determined not by the mere physiological minimum but also by needs that vary historically.

The use-value of labor power consists in the fact that it creates an exchange-value greater than its own. A capitalist pays for the right to use a worker's labor power over the course of a day, yet the working day is much longer than necessary to keep a worker in an active state. If the wages earned over the first half of the worker's day correspond to the value necessary to reproduce his labor power, those earned over the second half amount to unrequited labor. This generates an excess of value much larger than the cost of the worker's maintenance. This is what Marx calls "surplus value". The commodity character of labor power is the social nexus on which capitalist production is built. In this situation, a man functions as a thing. He is reduced to a state where it is his exchange-value, and not his personality, that counts for anything.

Praxis

Marx's theory of alienation is intimately linked to a theory of praxis. Praxis is Man's conscious, autonomous, creative, self-reflective shaping of changing historical conditions. Marx understands praxis as both a tool for changing the course of history and a criterion for the evaluation of history. Marxist humanism views Man as in essence a being of praxis – a self-conscious creature who can appropriate for his own use the whole realm of inorganic nature – and Marx's philosophy as in essence a "philosophy of praxis" – a theory that demands the act of changing the world while also participating in this act.

As human nature

The concept of human nature is the belief that all human individuals share some common features. In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx describes his position on human nature as a unity of naturalism and humanism.

Naturalism is the view that Man is part of the system of nature. Marx sees Man as an objective, natural being – the product of a long biological evolution. Nature is that which is opposed to Man, yet it is through nature that Man satisfies the needs and drives that constitute his essence. Man needs objects that are independent of him to express his objective nature.

Humanism is the view that Man is a being of praxis who both changes nature and creates himself. It is not the simple attribute of consciousness that makes man peculiarly human, but rather the unity of consciousness and practice – the conscious objectification of human powers and needs in sensuous reality. Marx distinguishes the free, conscious productive activity of human beings from the unconscious, compulsive production of animals. Praxis is an activity unique to Man: while other animals produce, they produce only what is immediately necessary. Man, on the other hand, produces universally and freely. Man is able to produce according to the standard of any species and at all times knows how to apply an intrinsic standard to the object he produces. Man thus creates according to the laws of beauty. The starting point for Man's self-development is the wealth of his own capacities and needs that he himself creates. Man's evolution enters the stage of human history when, through praxis, he acquires more and more control of blind natural forces and produces a humanized natural environment.

As human knowledge

Since Man's basic characteristic is his labor – his commerce with nature in which he is both active and passive – the traditional problems of epistemology must be looked at from a new standpoint. The role of work or labor in the cognitive process is a dominant epistemological theme in Marx's thought. Marx understands human knowledge to be mediated through praxis or intentional human agency. The relations between Man and his environment are relations between the species and the objects of its need. Practical usefulness is a factor in the definition of truth: a judgement or opinion's usefulness is not merely a tool for establishing its truth, but is what creates its truth.

In his Theses on Feuerbach, Marx admonishes the materialism of Ludwig Feuerbach for its contemplative theory of knowledge. Marx holds that Feuerbach's mistake lies with his failure to envisage objects as sensuous, practical, human activity. For Marx, perception is itself a component of Man's practical relationship to the world. The object of Man's perception is not "given" by indifferent nature, but is a humanized object, conditioned by human needs and efforts.

Criticism

As the terminology of alienation does not appear in a prominent manner in Marx's later works such as Capital, Marxist humanism has been quite controversial within Marxist circles. The tendency was attacked by the Italian Western Marxist Galvano Della Volpe and by Louis Althusser, the French Structuralist Marxist. Althusser criticizes Marxist humanists for not recognizing what he considers to be the fundamental dichotomy between the theory of the "Young Marx" and that of the "Mature Marx". Althusser holds that Marx's thought is marked by a radical epistemological break, to have occurred in 1845 – The German Ideology being the earliest work to betray the discontinuity. For Althusser, the humanism of Marx's early writings – an ethical theory – is fundamentally incongruous with the "scientific" theory he argues is to be found in Marx's later works. In his view, the Mature Marx presents the social relations of capitalism as relations within and between structures; individuals or classes have no role as the subjects of history.

Althusser believes socialist humanism to be an ethical and thus ideological phenomenon. Humanism is a bourgeois individualist philosophy that ascribes a universal essence of Man that is the attribute of each individual and through which there is potential for authenticity and common human purpose. This essence does not exist: it is a formal structure of thought whose content is determined by the dominant interests of each historical epoch. The argument of socialist humanism rests on a similar moral and ethical basis. Hence, it reflects the reality of discrimination and exploitation that gives rise to it but never truly grasps this reality in thought. Marxist theory must go beyond this to a scientific analysis that directs to underlying forces such as economic relations and social institutions. For this reason, Althusser sympathized with the criticisms of socialist humanism made by the Chinese Communist Party, which condemned the tendency as "revisionism" and "phony communism".

Althusser sees Marxist theory as primarily science and not philosophy but he does not adhere to Engels's "natural philosophy". He claims that the philosophy implicit in Marxism is an epistemology (theory of knowledge) that sees science as "theoretical practice" and philosophy as the "theory of theoretical practice". However, he later qualifies this by claiming that Marxist philosophy, unlike Marxist science, has normative and ideological elements: Marxist philosophy is "politics in the field of theory" and "class struggle in theory".

Althusser is critical of what he perceives to be a reliance among Marxist humanists on Marx's 1844 Manuscripts, which Marx did not write for publication. Marxist humanists strongly dispute this: they hold that the concept of alienation is recognizable in Marx's mature work even when the terminology has been abandoned. Teodor Shanin and Raya Dunayevskaya assert that not only is alienation present in the late Marx, but that there is no meaningful distinction to be made between the "young Marx" and "mature Marx". The Marxist humanist activist Lilia D. Monzó states that "Marxist-Humanism, as developed by Raya Dunayevskaya, considers the totality of Marx's works, recognizing that his early work in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, was profoundly humanist and led to and embeds his later works, including Capital."

Contra Althusser, Leszek Kołakowski argues that although it is true that in Capital Marx treats human individuals as mere embodiments of functions within a system of relations apparently possessed of its own dynamic and created independently, he does so not as a general methodical rule, but as a critique of the dehumanizing nature of exchange-value. When Marx and Engels present individuals as non-subjects subordinated to structures that they unwittingly support, their intention is to illuminate the absence of control that persons have in bourgeois society. Marx and Engels do not see the domination of alien forces over humans as an eternal truth, but rather as the very state of affairs to be ended by the overthrow of capitalism.

Marxist humanists

Notable thinkers associated with Marxist humanism include:

  • Kevin B. Anderson (born 1948), American social theorist and activist.
  • Walter Benjamin (1892–1940), German-Jewish Marxist literary critic, essayist, translator, and philosopher.
  • John Berger (1926–2017), English art critic, novelist, painter and author.
  • Marshall Berman (1940–2013), American Marxist Humanist writer and philosopher. Author of All That Is Solid Melts into Air.
  • Ernst Bloch (1885–1977), German Marxist philosopher.
  • Raya Dunayevskaya (1910–1987), founder of the philosophy of Marxist Humanism in the United States.
  • Frantz Fanon (1925–1961), psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary, and author from Martinique.
  • Frankfurt School (1930s onwards), a school of neo-Marxist critical theory, social research, and philosophy.
  • Paulo Freire (1921–1997), Brazilian educator and influential theorist of critical pedagogy.
  • Erich Fromm (1900–1980), internationally renowned social psychologist, psychoanalyst, and humanistic philosopher.
  • Nigel Gibson British & American philosopher
  • Lucien Goldmann (1913–1970), French philosopher and sociologist of Jewish-Romanian origin.
  • Lewis Gordon (born 1962), Black American philosopher.
  • André Gorz (1923–2007), Austrian and French social philosopher.
  • Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937), an Italian writer, politician, political philosopher, and linguist.[157]
  • Christopher Hill (1912–2003), English Marxist historian.
  • C. L. R. James (1901–1989), Afro-Trinidadian journalist, socialist theorist and writer.
  • Andrew Kliman, Marxist economist and philosopher.
  • Leszek Kołakowski (1927–2009), Polish philosopher and historian of ideas. Kołakowski broke with Marxism after the Polish 1968 political crisis forced him out of Poland.
  • Karel Kosík (1926–2003), Czech philosopher who wrote on topics such as phenomenology and dialectics from a Marxist humanist perspective.
  • Henri Lefebvre (1901–1991), French sociologist, intellectual and philosopher generally considered to be a Neo-Marxist.
  • John Lewis (philosopher) (1889–1976), British Unitarian minister and Marxist philosopher.
  • György Lukács (1885–1971), Hungarian Marxist philosopher and literary critic.
  • Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979), German philosopher and sociologist, and a member of the Frankfurt School.
  • José Carlos Mariátegui (1894–1930), Peruvian intellectual, journalist and political philosopher.
  • Peter McLaren (born 1948), one of the leading architects of critical pedagogy.
  • David McReynolds (1929–2018), American democratic socialist and pacifist activist.
  • Rodolfo Mondolfo (1877–1976), Italian Marxist philosopher and historian of Ancient Greek philosophy.
  • News and Letters Committees (1950s onwards), a small, revolutionary-socialist organization in the United States founded by Dunayevskaya.
  • Praxis School (1960s and 1970s), Marxist humanist philosophical movement. It originated in Zagreb and Belgrade in the SFR Yugoslavia.
  • Budapest School, of Marxist humanism, post-Marxism and dissident liberalism that emerged in Hungary in the early 1960s.
  • Maximilien Rubel (1905–1996)
  • Franklin Rosemont (1943–2009), American writer, artist, historian, and activist.
  • Wang Ruoshui (1926–2002), Chinese journalist and philosopher.
  • Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980), French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic.
  • Cyril Smith (1929–2008), British lecturer of statistics at the London School of Economics, socialist, and revolutionary humanist.
  • Ivan Sviták (1925–1994), Czech social critic and aesthetic theorist.
  • E. P. Thompson (1924–1993), English historian, socialist and peace campaigner.
  • Raymond Williams (1921–1988), Welsh literary theorist, co-founder of cultural studies.

Multilingualism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Multilingual sign outside the mayor's office in Novi Sad, Serbia, written in the four official languages of the city: Serbian, Hungarian, Slovak, and Pannonian Rusyn.
 
A stenciled danger sign in Singapore written in English, Chinese, Tamil, and Malay (the four official languages of Singapore).
 

Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all Europeans claim to speak at least one language other than their mother tongue; but many read and write in one language. Multilingualism is advantageous for people wanting to participate in trade, globalization and cultural openness. Owing to the ease of access to information facilitated by the Internet, individuals' exposure to multiple languages has become increasingly possible. People who speak several languages are also called polyglots.

Multilingual speakers have acquired and maintained at least one language during childhood, the so-called first language (L1). The first language (sometimes also referred to as the mother tongue) is usually acquired without formal education, by mechanisms about which scholars disagree. Children acquiring two languages natively from these early years are called simultaneous bilinguals. It is common for young simultaneous bilinguals to be more proficient in one language than the other.

People who speak more than one language have been reported to be more adept at language learning compared to monolinguals.

Multilingualism in computing can be considered part of a continuum between internationalization and localization. Due to the status of English in computing, software development nearly always uses it (but not in the case of non-English-based programming languages). Some commercial software is initially available in an English version, and multilingual versions, if any, may be produced as alternative options based on the English original.

History

The first recorded use of the word multilingualism originated in the English language in the 1800s as a combination of multi (many) and lingual (pertaining to languages, with the word existing in the Middle Ages). The phenomenon however, is old as different languages themselves.

Together, like many different languages, modern-day multilingualism is still encountered by some people who speak the same language. Bilingual signs represent a multitude of languages in an evolutive variety of texts with each writing.

Definition

Bilingual no trespassing sign at a construction site in Helsinki; upper text in Finnish and lower text in Swedish.

The definition of multilingualism is a subject of debate in the same way as that of language fluency. At one end of a sort of linguistic continuum, one may define multilingualism as complete competence in and mastery of more than one language. The speaker would presumably have complete knowledge and control over the languages and thus sound like a native speaker. At the opposite end of the spectrum would be people who know enough phrases to get around as a tourist using the alternate language. Since 1992, Vivian Cook has argued that most multilingual speakers fall somewhere between minimal and maximal definitions. Cook calls these people multi-competent.

In addition, there is no consistent definition of what constitutes a distinct language. For instance, scholars often disagree whether Scots is a language in its own right or merely a dialect of English. Furthermore, what is considered a language can change, often for purely political reasons. One example is the creation of Serbo-Croatian as a standard language on the basis of the Eastern Herzegovinian dialect to function as umbrella for numerous South Slavic dialects; after the breakup of Yugoslavia it was split into Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin. Another example is that Ukrainian was dismissed as a Russian dialect by the Russian tsars to discourage national feelings. Many small independent nations' schoolchildren are today compelled to learn multiple languages because of international interactions. For example, in Finland, all children are required to learn at least three languages: the two national languages (Finnish and Swedish) and one foreign language (usually English). Many Finnish schoolchildren also study further languages, such as German or Russian.

In some large nations with multiple languages, such as India, schoolchildren may routinely learn multiple languages based on where they reside in the country.

In many countries, bilingualism occurs through international relations, which, with English being the global lingua franca, sometimes results in majority bilingualism even when the countries have just one domestic official language. This is occurring especially in Germanic regions such as Scandinavia, the Benelux and among Germanophones, but it is also expanding into some non-Germanic countries.

Acquisition

One view is that of the linguist Noam Chomsky in what he calls the human language acquisition device—a mechanism which enables a learner to recreate correctly the rules and certain other characteristics of language used by surrounding speakers. This device, according to Chomsky, wears out over time, and is not normally available by puberty, which he uses to explain the poor results some adolescents and adults have when learning aspects of a second language (L2).

If language learning is a cognitive process, rather than a language acquisition device, as the school led by Stephen Krashen suggests, there would only be relative, not categorical, differences between the two types of language learning.

Rod Ellis quotes research finding that the earlier children learn a second language, the better off they are, in terms of pronunciation. European schools generally offer secondary language classes for their students early on, due to the interconnectedness with neighbor countries with different languages. Most European students now study at least two foreign languages, a process strongly encouraged by the European Union.

Based on the research in Ann Fathman's The Relationship between age and second language productive ability, there is a difference in the rate of learning of English morphology, syntax and phonology based upon differences in age, but that the order of acquisition in second language learning does not change with age.

In second language class, students will commonly face difficulties in thinking in the target language because they are influenced by their native language and culture patterns. Robert B. Kaplan thinks that in second language classes, the foreign-student paper is out of focus because the foreign student is employing rhetoric and a sequence of thought which violate the expectations of the native reader. Foreign students who have mastered syntactic structures have still demonstrated an inability to compose adequate themes, term papers, theses, and dissertations. Robert B. Kaplan describes two key words that affect people when they learn a second language. Logic in the popular, rather than the logician's sense of the word, is the basis of rhetoric, evolved out of a culture; it is not universal. Rhetoric, then, is not universal either, but varies from culture to culture and even from time to time within a given culture. Language teachers know how to predict the differences between pronunciations or constructions in different languages, but they might be less clear about the differences between rhetoric, that is, in the way they use language to accomplish various purposes, particularly in writing.

People who learn multiple languages may also experience positive transfer – the process by which it becomes easier to learn additional languages if the grammar or vocabulary of the new language is similar to those of the languages already spoken. On the other hand, students may also experience negative transfer – interference from languages learned at an earlier stage of development while learning a new language later in life.

Receptive bilingualism

Receptive bilinguals are those who can understand a second language but who cannot speak it or whose abilities to speak it are inhibited by psychological barriers. Receptive bilingualism is frequently encountered among adult immigrants to the U.S. who do not speak English as a native language but who have children who do speak English natively, usually in part because those children's education has been conducted in English; while the immigrant parents can understand both their native language and English, they speak only their native language to their children. If their children are likewise receptively bilingual but productively English-monolingual, throughout the conversation the parents will speak their native language and the children will speak English. If their children are productively bilingual, however, those children may answer in the parents' native language, in English, or in a combination of both languages, varying their choice of language depending on factors such as the communication's content, context, and/or emotional intensity and the presence or absence of third-party speakers of one language or the other. The third alternative represents the phenomenon of "code-switching" in which the productively bilingual party to a communication switches languages in the course of that communication. Receptively bilingual persons, especially children, may rapidly achieve oral fluency by spending extended time in situations where they are required to speak the language that they theretofore understood only passively. Until both generations achieve oral fluency, not all definitions of bilingualism accurately characterize the family as a whole, but the linguistic differences between the family's generations often constitute little or no impairment to the family's functionality. Receptive bilingualism in one language as exhibited by a speaker of another language, or even as exhibited by most speakers of that language, is not the same as mutual intelligibility of languages; the latter is a property of a pair of languages, namely a consequence of objectively high lexical and grammatical similarities between the languages themselves (e.g., Norwegian and Swedish), whereas the former is a property of one or more persons and is determined by subjective or intersubjective factors such as the respective languages' prevalence in the life history (including family upbringing, educational setting, and ambient culture) of the person or persons.

Order of acquisition

In sequential bilingualism, learners receive literacy instruction in their native language until they acquire a "threshold" literacy proficiency. Some researchers use age three as the age when a child has basic communicative competence in their first language (Kessler, 1984). Children may go through a process of sequential acquisition if they migrate at a young age to a country where a different language is spoken, or if the child exclusively speaks his or her heritage language at home until he/she is immersed in a school setting where instruction is offered in a different language.

In simultaneous bilingualism, the native language and the community language are simultaneously taught. The advantage is literacy in two languages as the outcome. However, the teacher must be well-versed in both languages and also in techniques for teaching a second language.

The phases children go through during sequential acquisition are less linear than for simultaneous acquisition and can vary greatly among children. Sequential acquisition is a more complex and lengthier process, although there is no indication that non-language-delayed children end up less proficient than simultaneous bilinguals, so long as they receive adequate input in both languages.

A coordinate model posits that equal time should be spent in separate instruction of the native language and the community language. The native language class, however, focuses on basic literacy while the community language class focuses on listening and speaking skills. Being bilingual does not necessarily mean that one can speak, for example, English and French.

Outcomes

Research has found that the development of competence in the native language serves as a foundation of proficiency that can be transposed to the second language – the common underlying proficiency hypothesis. Cummins' work sought to overcome the perception propagated in the 1960s that learning two languages made for two competing aims. The belief was that the two languages were mutually exclusive and that learning a second required unlearning elements and dynamics of the first to accommodate the second. The evidence for this perspective relied on the fact that some errors in acquiring the second language were related to the rules of the first language.

Another new development that has influenced the linguistic argument for bilingual literacy is the length of time necessary to acquire the second language. While previously children were believed to have the ability to learn a language within a year, today researchers believe that within and across academic settings, the period is closer to five years.

An interesting outcome of studies during the early 1990s, however, confirmed that students who do complete bilingual instruction perform better academically. These students exhibit more cognitive elasticity including a better ability to analyze abstract visual patterns. Students who receive bidirectional bilingual instruction where equal proficiency in both languages is required perform at an even higher level. Examples of such programs include international and multi-national education schools.

In individuals

A multilingual person is someone who can communicate in more than one language actively (through speaking, writing, or signing). Multilingual people can speak any language they write in, but cannot necessarily write in any language they speak. More specifically, bilingual and trilingual people are those in comparable situations involving two or three languages, respectively. A multilingual person is generally referred to as a polyglot, a term that may also refer to people who learn multiple languages as a hobby. Multilingual speakers have acquired and maintained at least one language during childhood, the so-called first language (L1). The first language (sometimes also referred to as the mother tongue) is acquired without formal education, by mechanisms heavily disputed. Children acquiring two languages in this way are called simultaneous bilinguals. Even in the case of simultaneous bilinguals, one language usually dominates over the other.

In linguistics, first language acquisition is closely related to the concept of a "native speaker". According to a view widely held by linguists, a native speaker of a given language has in some respects a level of skill which a second (or subsequent) language learner cannot easily accomplish. Consequently, descriptive empirical studies of languages are usually carried out using only native speakers. This view is, however, slightly problematic, particularly as many non-native speakers demonstrably not only successfully engage with and in their non-native language societies, but in fact may become culturally and even linguistically important contributors (as, for example, writers, politicians, media personalities and performing artists) in their non-native language. In recent years, linguistic research has focused attention on the use of widely known world languages, such as English, as a lingua franca or a shared common language of professional and commercial communities. In lingua franca situations, most speakers of the common language are functionally multilingual.

The reverse phenomenon, where people who know more than one language end up losing command of some or all of their additional languages, is called language attrition. It has been documented that, under certain conditions, individuals may lose their L1 language proficiency completely, after switching to the exclusive use of another language, and effectively "become native" in a language that was once secondary after the L1 undergoes total attrition.

This is most commonly seen among immigrant communities and has been the subject of substantial academic study. The most important factor in spontaneous, total L1 loss appears to be age; in the absence of neurological dysfunction or injury, only young children typically are at risk of forgetting their native language and switching to a new one. Once they pass an age that seems to correlate closely with the critical period, around the age of 12, total loss of a native language is not typical, although it is still possible for speakers to experience diminished expressive capacity if the language is never practiced.

Cognitive ability

People who use more than one language have been reported to be more adept at language learning compared to monolinguals. Individuals who are highly proficient in two or more languages have been reported to have enhanced executive functions, such as inhibitory control or cognitive flexibility, or even have reduced-risk for dementia. More recently, however, this claim has come under strong criticism with repeated failures to replicate. One possible reason for this discrepancy is that bilingualism is rich and diverse; bilingualism can take different forms according to the context and geographic location in which it is studied. Yet, many prior studies do not reliably quantify samples of bilinguals under investigation. An emerging perspective is that studies on bilingual and multilingual cognitive abilities need to account for validated and granular quantifications of language experience in order to identify boundary conditions of possible cognitive effects.

Auditory ability

Bilingual and multilingual individuals are shown to have superior auditory processing abilities compared to monolingual individuals. Several investigations have compared auditory processing abilities of monolingual and bilingual individuals using tasks such as gap detection, temporal ordering, pitch pattern recognition etc. In general, results of studies have reported superior performance among bilingual and multilingual individuals. Further, among bilingual individuals, the level of proficiency in the second language was also reported to have an influence on the auditory processing abilities.

Economic benefits

Bilinguals might have important labor market advantages over monolingual individuals as bilingual people can carry out duties that monolinguals cannot, such as interacting with customers who only speak a minority language. A study in Switzerland has found that multilingualism is positively correlated with an individual's salary, the productivity of firms, and the gross domestic production (GDP); the authors state that Switzerland's GDP is augmented by 10% by multilingualism. A study in the United States by Agirdag found that bilingualism has substantial economic benefits as bilingual persons were found to have around $3,000 per year more salary than monolinguals.

Psychology

A study in 2012 has shown that using a foreign language reduces decision-making biases. It was surmised that the framing effect disappeared when choices are presented in a second language. As human reasoning is shaped by two distinct modes of thought: one that is systematic, analytical and cognition-intensive, and another that is fast, unconscious and emotionally charged, it was believed that a second language provides a useful cognitive distance from automatic processes, promoting analytical thought and reducing unthinking, emotional reaction. Therefore, those who speak two languages have better critical thinking and decision-making skills. A study published a year later found that switching into a second language seems to exempt bilinguals from the social norms and constraints such as political correctness. In 2014, another study has shown that people using a foreign language are more likely to make utilitarian decisions when faced with a moral dilemma, as in the trolley problem. The utilitarian option was chosen more often in the fat man case when presented in a foreign language. However, there was no difference in the switch track case. It was surmised that a foreign language lacks the emotional impact of one's native language.

Personality

Because it is difficult or impossible to master many of the high-level semantic aspects of a language (including but not limited to its idioms and eponyms) without first understanding the culture and history of the region in which that language evolved, as a practical matter an in-depth familiarity with multiple cultures is a prerequisite for high-level multilingualism. This knowledge of cultures individually and comparatively can form an important part of both what one considers one's identity to be and what others consider that identity to be. Some studies have found that groups of multilingual individuals get higher average scores on tests for certain personality traits such as cultural empathy, open-mindedness and social initiative. The idea of linguistic relativity, which claims that the language people speak influences the way they see the world, can be interpreted to mean that individuals who speak multiple languages have a broader, more diverse view of the world, even when speaking only one language at a time. Some bilinguals feel that their personality changes depending on which language they are speaking; thus multilingualism is said to create multiple personalities. Xiao-lei Wang states in her book Growing up with Three Languages: Birth to Eleven: "Languages used by speakers with one or more than one language are used not just to represent a unitary self, but to enact different kinds of selves, and different linguistic contexts create different kinds of self-expression and experiences for the same person." However, there has been little rigorous research done on this topic and it is difficult to define "personality" in this context. François Grosjean wrote: "What is seen as a change in personality is most probably simply a shift in attitudes and behaviors that correspond to a shift in situation or context, independent of language." However, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which states that a language shapes our vision of the world, may suggest that a language learned by a grown-up may have much fewer emotional connotations and therefore allow a more serene discussion than a language learned by a child and to that respect more or less bound to a child's perception of the world. A 2013 study found that rather than an emotion-based explanation, switching into the second language seems to exempt bilinguals from the social norms and constraints such as political correctness.

Hyperpolyglots

While many polyglots know up to six languages, the number drops off sharply past this point. People who speak many more than this—Michael Erard suggests eleven or more—are sometimes classed as hyperpolyglots. Giuseppe Caspar Mezzofanti, for example, was an Italian priest reputed to have spoken anywhere from 30 to 72 languages. The causes of advanced language aptitude are still under research; one theory suggests that a spike in a baby's testosterone levels while in the uterus can increase brain asymmetry, which may relate to music and language ability, among other effects.

While the term "savant" generally refers to an individual with a natural and/or innate talent for a particular field, people diagnosed with savant syndrome are typically individuals with significant mental disabilities who demonstrate profound and prodigious capacities and/or abilities far in excess of what would be considered normal, occasionally including the capacity for languages. The condition is associated with an increased memory capacity, which would aid in the storage and retrieval of knowledge of a language. In 1991, for example, Neil Smith and Ianthi-Maria Tsimpli described Christopher, a man with non-verbal IQ scores between 40 and 70, who learned sixteen languages. Christopher was born in 1962 and approximately six months after his birth was diagnosed with brain damage. Despite being institutionalized because he was unable to take care of himself, Christopher had a verbal IQ of 89, was able to speak English with no impairment, and could learn subsequent languages with apparent ease. This facility with language and communication is considered unusual among savants.

Terms

  • monolingual, monoglot - 1 language spoken
  • bilingual, diglot - 2 languages spoken
  • trilingual, triglot - 3 languages spoken
  • quadrilingual, tetraglot - 4 languages spoken
  • quinquelingual, pentaglot - 5 languages spoken
  • sexalingual, hexaglot - 6 languages spoken
  • septilingual or septalingual, heptaglot - 7 languages spoken
  • octolingual or octalingual, octoglot - 8 languages spoken
  • novelingual or nonalingual, enneaglot - 9 languages spoken
  • decalingual, decaglot - 10 languages spoken
  • undecalingual, hendecaglot - 11 languages spoken
  • duodecalingual, dodecaglot - 12 languages spoken

It is important to note that terms past trilingual are rarely used. People who speak four or more languages are generally just referred to as multilingual.

Neuroscience

In communities

Croatian-Italian bilingual plate on a public building in Pula/Pola (Istria)
 
A bilingual sign in Brussels, the capital of Belgium. In Brussels, both Dutch and French are official languages.
 
A multilingual sign at the Hong Kong-Macau Ferry Pier in Macau. At the top are Portuguese and Chinese, which are the official languages of Macau, while at the bottom are Japanese and English, which are common languages used by tourists (English is also one of Hong Kong's two official languages).
 
A caution message in English, Kannada and Hindi found in Bangalore, India
 
The three-language (Tamil, English and Hindi) name board at the Tirusulam suburban railway station in Chennai (Madras). Almost all railway stations in India have signs like these in three or more languages (English, Hindi and the local language).
 
Multilingual sign at Vancouver International Airport, international arrivals area. Text in English, French, and Chinese is a permanent feature of this sign, while the right panel of the sign is a video screen that rotates through additional languages.
 
Multilingual sign at an exit of SM Mall of Asia in Pasay, Philippines. Three or four languages are shown: Japanese/Mandarin Chinese ("deguchi" or "chūkǒu", respectively), English ("exit") and Korean ("chulgu"). While Filipinos themselves are anglophone, such signs cater to the growing number of Koreans and other foreigners in the country.
 
Multilingual message at a comfort room in Puerto Princesa, Palawan, the Philippines that prohibits foot washing. Text is written in six languages: English, Filipino, Cebuano, Chinese, Korean, and Russian respectively.
 
A train name found in South India written in four languages: Kannada, Hindi, Tamil, and English. Boards like this are common on trains which pass through two or more states where the languages are spoken are different.
 
A trilingual (Arabic, English and Urdu) sign in the UAE in the three widely spoken languages in the UAE

Widespread multilingualism is one form of language contact. Multilingualism was common in the past: in early times, when most people were members of small language communities, it was necessary to know two or more languages for trade or any other dealings outside one's town or village, and this holds good today in places of high linguistic diversity such as Sub-Saharan Africa and India. Linguist Ekkehard Wolff estimates that 50% of the population of Africa is multilingual.

In multilingual societies, not all speakers need to be multilingual. Some states can have multilingual policies and recognize several official languages, such as Canada (English and French). In some states, particular languages may be associated with particular regions in the state (e.g., Canada) or with particular ethnicities (e.g., Malaysia and Singapore). When all speakers are multilingual, linguists classify the community according to the functional distribution of the languages involved:

  • Diglossia: if there is a structural-functional distribution of the languages involved, the society is termed 'diglossic'. Typical diglossic areas are those areas in Europe where a regional language is used in informal, usually oral, contexts, while the state language is used in more formal situations. Frisia (with Frisian and German or Dutch) and Lusatia (with Sorbian and German) are well-known examples. Some writers limit diglossia to situations where the languages are closely related and could be considered dialects of each other. This can also be observed in Scotland where, in formal situations, English is used. However, in informal situations in many areas, Scots is the preferred language of choice. A similar phenomenon is also observed in Arabic-speaking regions. The effects of diglossia could be seen in the difference between written Arabic (Modern Standard Arabic) and colloquial Arabic. However, as time goes, the Arabic language somewhere between the two has been created what some have deemed "Middle Arabic" or "Common Arabic". Because of this diversification of the language, the concept of spectroglossia has been suggested.
  • Ambilingualism: a region is called ambilingual if this functional distribution is not observed. In a typical ambilingual area it is nearly impossible to predict which language will be used in a given setting. True ambilingualism is rare. Ambilingual tendencies can be found in small states with multiple heritages like Luxembourg, which has a combined Franco-Germanic heritage, or Malaysia and Singapore, which fuses the cultures of Malays, China, and India or communities with high rates of deafness like Martha's Vineyard where historically most inhabitants spoke both MVSL and English or in southern Israel where locals speak both Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language and either Arabic or Hebrew. Ambilingualism also can manifest in specific regions of larger states that have both a dominant state language (be it de jure or de facto) and a protected minority language that is limited in terms of the distribution of speakers within the country. This tendency is especially pronounced when, even though the local language is widely spoken, there is a reasonable assumption that all citizens speak the predominant state tongue (e.g., English in Quebec vs. all of Canada; Spanish in Catalonia vs. all of Spain). This phenomenon can also occur in border regions with many cross-border contacts.
  • Bipart-lingualism: if more than one language can be heard in a small area, but the large majority of speakers are monolinguals, who have little contact with speakers from neighboring ethnic groups, an area is called 'bipart-lingual'. An example of this is the Balkans.

N.B. the terms given above all refer to situations describing only two languages. In cases of an unspecified number of languages, the terms polyglossia, omnilingualism, and multipart-lingualism are more appropriate.

Taxell’s paradox refers to the notion that monolingual solutions are essential to the realization of functional bilingualism, with multilingual solutions ultimately leading to monolingualism. The theory is based on the observation of the Swedish language in Finland in environments such as schools is subordinated to the majority language Finnish for practical and social reasons, despite the positive characteristics associated with mutual language learning.

Interaction between speakers of different languages

Whenever two people meet, negotiations take place. If they want to express solidarity and sympathy, they tend to seek common features in their behavior. If speakers wish to express distance towards or even dislike of the person they are speaking to, the reverse is true, and differences are sought. This mechanism also extends to language, as described in the Communication Accommodation Theory.

Some multilinguals use code-switching, which involves swapping between languages. In many cases, code-switching allows speakers to participate in more than one cultural group or environment. Code-switching may also function as a strategy where proficiency is lacking. Such strategies are common if the vocabulary of one of the languages is not very elaborated for certain fields, or if the speakers have not developed proficiency in certain lexical domains, as in the case of immigrant languages.

This code-switching appears in many forms. If a speaker has a positive attitude towards both languages and towards code-switching, many switches can be found, even within the same sentence. If however, the speaker is reluctant to use code-switching, as in the case of a lack of proficiency, he might knowingly or unknowingly try to camouflage his attempt by converting elements of one language into elements of the other language through calquing. This results in speakers using words like courrier noir (literally mail that is black) in French, instead of the proper word for blackmail, chantage.

Sometimes a pidgin language may develop. A pidgin language is a fusion of two languages that is mutually understandable for both speakers. Some pidgin languages develop into real languages (such as Papiamento in Curaçao or Singlish in Singapore) while others remain as slangs or jargons (such as Helsinki slang, which is more or less mutually intelligible both in Finnish and Swedish). In other cases, prolonged influence of languages on each other may have the effect of changing one or both to the point where it may be considered that a new language is born. For example, many linguists believe that the Occitan language and the Catalan language were formed because of a population speaking a single Occitano-Romance language was divided into political spheres of influence of France and Spain, respectively. Yiddish is a complex blend of Middle High German with Hebrew and borrowings from Slavic languages.

Bilingual interaction can even take place without the speaker switching. In certain areas, it is not uncommon for speakers to use a different language within the same conversation. This phenomenon is found, amongst other places, in Scandinavia. Most speakers of Swedish, Norwegian and Danish can communicate with each other speaking their respective languages, while few can speak both (people used to these situations often adjust their language, avoiding words that are not found in the other language or that can be misunderstood). Using different languages is usually called non-convergent discourse, a term introduced by the Dutch linguist Reitze Jonkman. To a certain extent, this situation also exists between Dutch and Afrikaans, although everyday contact is fairly rare because of the distance between the two respective communities. Another example is the former state of Czechoslovakia, where two closely related and mutually intelligible languages (Czech and Slovak) were in common use. Most Czechs and Slovaks understand both languages, although they would use only one of them (their respective mother tongue) when speaking. For example, in Czechoslovakia, it was common to hear two people talking on television each speaking a different language without any difficulty understanding each other. This bilinguality still exists nowadays, although it has started to deteriorate after Czechoslovakia split up.

Computing

Dual language Hebrew and English keyboard

With emerging markets and expanding international cooperation, business users expect to be able to use software and applications in their own language. Multilingualisation (or "m17n", where "17" stands for 17 omitted letters) of computer systems can be considered part of a continuum between internationalization and localization:

  • A localized system has been adapted or converted for a particular locale (other than the one it was originally developed for), including the language of the user interface, input, and display, and features such as time/date display and currency; but each instance of the system only supports a single locale.
  • Multilingualised software supports multiple languages for display and input simultaneously, but generally has a single user interface language. Support for other locale features like time, date, number and currency formats may vary as the system tends towards full internationalization. Generally, a multilingual system is intended for use in a specific locale, whilst allowing for multilingual content.
  • An internationalized system is equipped for use in a range of locales, allowing for the co-existence of several languages and character sets in user interfaces and displays. In particular, a system may not be considered internationalized in the fullest sense unless the interface language is selectable by the user at runtime.

Translating the user interface is usually part of the software localization process, which also includes adaptations such as units and date conversion. Many software applications are available in several languages, ranging from a handful (the most spoken languages) to dozens for the most popular applications (such as office suites, web browsers, etc.). Due to the status of English in computing, software development nearly always uses it (but see also Non-English-based programming languages), so almost all commercial software is initially available in an English version, and multilingual versions, if any, may be produced as alternative options based on the English original.

The Multilingual App Toolkit (MAT) was first released in concert with the release of Windows 8 as a way to provide developers a set of free tooling that enabled adding languages to their apps with just a few clicks, in large part due to the integration of a free, unlimited license to both the Microsoft Translator machine translation service and the Microsoft Language Platform service, along with platform extensibility to enable anyone to add translation services into MAT. Microsoft engineers and inventors of MAT, Jan A. Nelson, and Camerum Lerum have continued to drive development of the tools, working with third parties and standards bodies to assure broad availability of multilingual app development is provided. With the release of Windows 10, MAT is now delivering support for cross-platform development for Windows Universal Apps as well as IOS and Android.

Internet

English-speaking countries

According to Hewitt (2008) entrepreneurs in London from Poland, China or Turkey use English mainly for communication with customers, suppliers, and banks, but their native languages for work tasks and social purposes. Even in English-speaking countries immigrants are still able to use their mother tongue in the workplace thanks to other immigrants from the same place. Kovacs (2004) describes this phenomenon in Australia with Finnish immigrants in the construction industry who spoke Finnish during working hours. Although foreign languages may be used in the workplace, English is still a key working skill. Mainstream society justifies the divided job market, arguing that getting a low-paying job is the best that newcomers can achieve considering their limited language skills.

Asia

With companies going international they are now focusing more and more on the English level of their employees. Especially in South Korea since the 1990s, companies are using different English language testing to evaluate job applicants, and the criteria in those tests are constantly upgrading the level for good English. In India, it is even possible to receive training to acquire an English accent, as the number of outsourced call centers in India has soared in the past decades. Meanwhile, Japan ranks 53rd out of 100 countries in 2019 EF English Proficiency Index, amid calls for this to improve in time for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Within multiracial countries such as Malaysia and Singapore, it is not unusual for one to speak two or more languages, albeit with varying degrees of fluency. Some are proficient in several Chinese dialects, given the linguistic diversity of the ethnic Chinese community in both countries.

Africa

Not only in multinational companies is English an important skill, but also in the engineering industry, in the chemical, electrical and aeronautical fields. A study directed by Hill and van Zyl (2002) shows that in South Africa young black engineers used English most often for communication and documentation. However, Afrikaans and other local languages were also used to explain particular concepts to workers in order to ensure understanding and cooperation.

Europe

In Europe, as the domestic market is generally quite restricted, international trade is a norm. Languages that are used in multiple countries include:

  • German in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, and Belgium
  • French in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Monaco, Andorra and Switzerland
  • English in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Malta.
  • Swedish in Sweden and Finland.
  • Italian in Italy and Switzerland.

English is a commonly taught second language at schools, so it is also the most common choice for two speakers, whose native languages are different. However, some languages are so close to each other that it is generally more common when meeting to use their mother tongue rather than English. These language groups include:

In multilingual countries such as Belgium (Dutch, French, and German), Finland (Finnish and Swedish), Switzerland (German, French, Italian and Romansh), Luxembourg (Luxembourgish, French and German) or Spain (Spanish, Catalan, Basque and Galician), it is common to see employees mastering two or even three of those languages.

Many minor Russian ethnic groups, such as Tatars, Bashkirs and others, are also multilingual. Moreover, with the beginning of compulsory study of the Tatar language in Tatarstan, there has been an increase in its level of knowledge of the Russian-speaking population of the republic.

Continued global diversity has led to an increasingly multilingual workforce. Europe has become an excellent model to observe this newly diversified labor culture. The expansion of the European Union with its open labor market has provided opportunities both for well-trained professionals and unskilled workers to move to new countries to seek employment. Political changes and turmoil have also led to migration and the creation of new and more complex multilingual workplaces. In most wealthy and secure countries, immigrants are found mostly in low paid jobs but also, increasingly, in high-status positions.

Music

It is extremely common for music to be written in whatever the contemporary lingua franca is. If a song is not written in a common tongue, then it is usually written in whatever is the predominant language in the musician's country of origin, or in another widely recognized language, such as English, German, Spanish, or French.

The bilingual song cycles "there..." and "Sing, Poetry" on the 2011 contemporary classical album Troika consist of musical settings of Russian poems with their English self-translation by Joseph Brodsky and Vladimir Nabokov, respectively.

Songs with lyrics in multiple languages are known as macaronic verse.

Literature

Fiction

Multilingual stories, essays, and novels are often written by immigrants and second generation American authors. Chicana author Gloria E. Anzaldúa, a major figure in the fields Third World Feminism, Postcolonial Feminism, and Latino philosophy explained the author's existential sense of obligation to write multilingual literature. An often quoted passage, from her collection of stories and essays entitled Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, states:

"Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having always to translate, while I still have to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak Spanglish, and as long as I have to accommodate the English speakers rather than having them accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimate. I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish, white. I will have my serpent’s tongue – my woman’s voice, my sexual voice, my poet’s voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence".

Multilingual novels by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie display phrases in Igbo with translations, as in her early works Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun. However, in her later novel Americanah, the author does not offer translations of non-English passages. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros is an example of Chicano literature has untranslated, but italicized, Spanish words and phrases throughout the text.

American novelists who use foreign languages (outside of their own cultural heritage) for literary effect, include Cormac McCarthy who uses untranslated Spanish and Spanglish in his fiction.

Poetry

Multilingual poetry is prevalent in US Latino literature where code-switching and translanguaging between English, Spanish, and Spanglish is common within a single poem or throughout a book of poems. Latino poetry is also written in Portuguese and can include phrases in Nahuatl, Mayan, Huichol, Arawakan, and other indigenous languages related to the Latino experience. Contemporary multilingual poets include Giannina Braschi, Ana Castillo, Sandra Cisneros, and Guillermo Gómez-Peña

Film

The 2021 Indian documentary film Dreaming of Words traces the life and work of Njattyela Sreedharan, a fourth standard drop-out, who compiled a multilingual dictionary connecting four major Dravidian languages Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu. Travelling across four states and doing extensive research, he spent twenty five years making this multilingual dictionary.

Numerical analysis

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerical_analysis ...