The structure and implications of the global language network
Name
862826039-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
7.89 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
5883c2403c96654a1edac5569db0b87a
Author(s)
Ronen, Shahar
Advisor(s)
César A. Hidalgo.
Alternative Title
Structure and implications of the GLN
Date Issued
2013
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
Languages vary enormously in global importance because of historical, demographic, political, and technological forces, and there has been much speculation about the current and future status of English as a global language. Yet there has been no rigorous way to define or quantify the relative global influence of languages. I propose that the structure of the network connecting multilingual speakers or translated texts, which I call the Global Language Network, provides a concept of language importance that is superior to simple economic or demographic measures. I map three independent global language networks (GLN) from millions of records of online and printed linguistic expressions taken from Wikipedia, Twitter, and UNESCO's database of book translations. I find that the structure of the three GLNs is hierarchically organized around English and a handful of hub languages, which include Spanish, German, French, Russian, Malay, and Portuguese, but not Chinese, Hindi or Arabic. Finally, I validate the measure of a language's centrality in the GLNs by showing that it correlates with measures of the number of illustrious people born in the countries associated with that language. I suggest that other phenomena of a language's present and future influence are systematically related to the structure of the global language networks.
Description
Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2013.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 69-73).
Subjects
Architecture. Program in Media Arts and Sciences.
MIT Department
Program in Media Arts and Sciences (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
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