Sustaining linguistic diversity : biocultural approaches to language, nature and community

Language loss, cultural homogenization and a loss of biological diversity are all occurring on a global scale and at a rapid rate. The global reductions in the diversity of languages and the diversity of natural ecosystems and species can both be seen to represent threats to the ongoing resilience of human society. Krauss (2007) for example, argues that the ‘logo-sphere’, the global web of cultural and linguistic diversity, is as important as the biosphere to human survival. How, though, are these diversities (linguistic/cultural and biological) conceptually and empirically connected, and what does this mean to reviving and maintaining global diversity across these two spheres? This chapter outlines key ideas around biocultural diversity, focusing in particular on the role of language in claims that the cultural and the biological are inextricably linked, and that this link is the answer to the maintenance of global diversity. It then asks if these conceptual connections between linguistic, cultural and biological diversity possess sufficient explanatory force to counter both racism and anti-cosmopolitanism.