CAMBRIDGE LETTER
Communicating internationally
By Bill Kirkman
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The Capri conference on `Linguistics for international communication' was a good demonstration of modern scholars' readiness to think beyond boundaries.
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CAPRI sounds like a pleasantly exotic place for a conference. I did not need much persuading, therefore, when I was invited to take part last week in a conference on "Linguistics for international communication".
In fact the flavour of the two days of the conference was practical and workmanlike rather than exotic. It brought together academic specialists from three universities in Naples, from two in Germany (Heidelberg and Dusseldorf) and one in the United Kingdom (the School of Oriental and African Studies — SOAS). My own role was to provide a journalist's view of language. Other topics included language and multi-culturalism, classical languages in the modern world, languages in the Internet and linguistic awareness in 21st Century communication.
International outlook
Much of the impetus for the conference came from Professor Rosanna Sornicola, of the University of Naples Frederico ll, like the other participants someone with a strongly international outlook and experience. Its underlying purpose was summed up in the programme: "In a `global' society international communication is essential and linguistics can play an important role in the study of international communicative processes and the understanding of internationalisation itself".
Professor Peter Austin of SOAS, in a lecture about language documentation, put his own significant emphasis on this purpose. He spoke of a new way of thinking about scholarship — outward looking, widely shared (by a range of researchers, not just linguists) and useful to the wider world. The base from which he made these observations is a major research project on endangered languages, of which there are several thousand, some spoken by only a handful of people.
By contrast, 96 per cent of the world's population speaks only four per cent of the languages, the top 10 languages (including English and Hindi) being spoken by half the world's population. As he reminded us, the disappearance of an endangered language is not just a matter for academic record; it is something that profoundly affects people and their culture and history.
The international variety of the participants reflected an important truth about modern Europe: boundaries, both political and cultural, are far less rigid than they were a generation ago. Whatever the Eurosceptics may say, "Europe" is more than a collection of countries. It does make sense to talk of a European approach.
That said, the practical aspects of collaboration are still much more complicated than the achievement of an agreed common goal. One desired outcome of the Capri conference, for example, was the establishment of a master's degree to be launched as a joint initiative by a group of universities from different countries. There was widespread agreement that setting up such a degree is a good idea. Putting the good idea into practice will not be simple. Universities in the different European countries are organised quite differently from each other, the differences reflecting the ethos of their different countries.
These continuing differences in ethos, after many years of European Union, should be reassuring to those who claim that close collaboration equals the end of national identity. (It is a claim frequently made in the U.K., where Euro-scepticism, and indeed downright hostility to the European idea, remains widespread.)
Specifically, coming together to produce a common master's degree, need not mean the end of university civilisation as we know it. Nor, of course, need it mean the dilution of standards. Indeed, if such a degree is to attract good students, it must be a guarantee of high standards.
There is a tendency in all universities to be obsessive about precedent.
It was brilliantly articulated in 1908 by F.M. Cornford in a satire on Cambridge university politics entitled Microcosmographia Academica. Describing the "Principle of the Dangerous Precedent" Cornford wrote: "Every public action, which is not customary, either is wrong, or, if it is right, is a dangerous precedent. It follows that nothing should ever be done for the first time."
Collaboration normal
Cynics can of course find relics of such attitudes in today's universities. The academic flavour of the early 21st Century, however, is quite different from that of the early 20th. International collaboration, and inter-disciplinary thinking, are now normal rather than dangerously radical.
If the enthusiasm for the European master's degree is as strong as it seemed to be in Capri, there is a reasonable chance that a way will be found to turn the idea into reality. The conference was a good demonstration of modern scholars' readiness to think beyond national or institutional boundaries, and to recognise that there are things, which should be "done for the first time".
The writer is an Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge, U.K. E-mail him at: wpk1000@hotmail.com
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