HOW DOES RESEARCH INTO HUMAN LANGUAGE REFORM GET STARTED THIS MILLENIUM?
- The subset of Linguistics called "Interlinguistics" needs to be
recognised as a significant area of study, and also of RESEARCH.
- Sponsorship - corporate, tertiary, government and global - must
become fashionable for Interlanguage Research.
- Recognition of NGO groups as worthy recipients for research grants
together with tertiary and commercial research establishments is needed.
- A critical attitude amongst the world's educated populus regarding
the responsibility of leaders to promote improved means of global
discourse is essential.
- The idea that each country has a national language policy is to be
encouraged, and that such policy should be subject ot ongoing debate is
essential. (This is based on the human principle that we must test all of
the wrong solutions before we finally decide to give in to common sense,
and test the right one.)
- Concerned citicens might look into the IAL story, and choose at
least one designed language, which is promoted as a candidate for
adoption as the IAL, to product-test it.
- Comparative studies teaching different potential IALs to matched
groups is an essential basic research ploy: such a global project would
need high-level co-ordination, and monitoring of the rigour observed.
- All of the above might not occur until after the much-needed change
in the human paradigm, from competitive to co-operative.
- A positive attitude towards ground-level intercultural communication
is inherent in the International Auxiliary Language concept: pressure
needs to be placed on political leaders to suppport the idea of
international communication at levels below the official.
- Existing groups discussing language reform and possible global co-
ordination, the News Group alt.linguistics.auxiliary and Mailing Lists
CONLANG, AUXLANG and INTERLANG, need to address fundamental logistic
problems - as well as debate the design of individual languges
- The promotion of IAL research is a puzzle of *chicken and egg*
economics: the chicken is World Community - through use of an IAL - and
the benefits that should flow to the common man from this; the hen
that would sit on the egg to hatch it, has already been thrown into the
pot in the form of reduced budgets for basic research; and the egg, which
some probably would not wish to see hatched, has been eaten - in the form
of commercial and academic exploitaion of the translation "market."
- Perhaps, unfunded citicen research, such as the ongoing
demonstration of the effectiveness of Esperanto as an Auxiliary Language,
and the growth of the Glosa "Translingual Project" are the main hopes for
World Community, to-day.
- Possibly, if people are struck by the realisation that we only have
one Earth, and that for human survival, we must talk across the political
and cultural boundaries, then maybe, they might ask our leaders to find
affordable ways in which all can discuss the possibility of our great
grand children's survival.
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