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Igor I. Kondrashin - Ph.D., Philosopher, Russia

Language as means of communication:
Philosophical aspects and global perspectives

As we know, language is a multifunctional phenomenon, thus the majority of functions of language are shown in communication. The main functions of language are the following:
• communicative (or function of communication) – the main function of language, use of language to convey information;
• constructive (or cogitative; thoughts imaging) – formation of thinking of an individual and society;

• cognitive (or accumulative function) - information transfer and its storage;

• emotional and expressive – expression of feelings, emotions;

• volitional (or invitingly-incentive function) - function of exposure;
• phatic (making contacts) - the use of language to establish psychological contact  between interlocutors;
 •  ideological function - the use of a language or a type of writing to express the ideological preferences;
• aesthetic – the sphere of creativity;

• reference (or reflective) – language function in which language is means of accumulation of human experience.

Most of these functions can be reduced to the following: collecting, assessment, analysis, processing, transfer and storage of information.

For its part, information (from the Latin. Informatio - explanation, presentation, knowledge) - is data on something, regardless of their form of presentation (verbal – oral and written, visual, musical).

Information is divided into:

1) for purpose:

• Mass (common) – contains trivial data and operates with a set of concepts understandable to the most of society.

•  Educational and training – contains basic information of training and educational character (intended primarily for children and youth).

• Cultural and educational - contains information on ethics (behavior), as well as national (traditions, customs) and classic cultural (especially literary) heritage.

• News – provides information about the situation and events in the region, the country and the world.

• Special (mainly professional) - contains a specific set of concepts, the use of which may not be clear to the bulk of the society, but quite clear within a narrow social or professional group, which uses this information.

2) by significance:

• Actual - information, valuable at this point in time.

• Reliable – information obtained without distortions.

• Clear – information expressed in a language, clear to the one to whom it is intended.

• Complete – information, sufficient to make the right decision or understanding.
• Useful – usefulness of information is defined by the subject who has received information depending on number of opportunities of its use.

•  De minimis – interesting information on the content, but as a rule, useless per se.

• Garbage (or even harmful) – information not interesting in content, and in fact, sometimes even harmful or dangerous.

Now independently from our more than 15 petabytes of information is being generated in the world daily different both on purpose and significance, while most of this information can be safely attributed to the minor importance, and even garbage. Every one and a half years (18 months), the entire volume of the produced information (at least) is doubled, and storage volumes grow by 45% a year.

Due to the advent of the Internet, these volumes have increased in times and  in the future will only grow exponentially. But even to get acquainted with the existing volume of useful information only, it will take time equal to tens of human lives of continuous reading. The situation is complicated by the fact that the semantic information is contained in various languages, and while its translation from one language to another the sense of the information is often distorted due to the large number of words-homonyms in different languages​​, and it is difficult for interpreters – non-specialists to find a correct meaning for such words. Homonym, as we know, [Greek homōnyma <homos same + onyma name] – is the word that has the same form like another, but its meaning has nothing common with it.

According to various calculations, at present  there are up to 7000 languages in the world but only a few dozens of them have global significance or are used officially.
In view of this, more and more misunderstanding grows between members of a single humanity separated by language barriers. Owing to this fact, the development of the international communication has brought to the state when the number of living languages ​​is being forcibly reduced with an average speed of one language every two weeks. It is also known that about 2/3 of the population of the Earth are talking in 40 most widespread languages ​​. Most people speak Chinese, Hindi, English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian and Portuguese. Significantly extended also French but the number of those who consider it as their native language (the first), is relatively small.

If the current trend does not change, about half of the nowadays existing languages ​​will go out of use already by the middle of the XXI century. Many languages ​​are disappearing due to the fact that their native speakers come into contact with the stronger language environment, therefore under the threat of disappearance first of all are the languages of small nationalities and languages of the peoples without statehood. If the language is studied less than 70% of children, it is considered endangered. According to the "Atlas of the world languages being under the threat of disappearance" of UNESCO, now in Europe extinction threatens about 50 languages.

At the same time, taking into account the annual growth of volume of only useful information, a question of using a single language for all peoples on the planet came before mankind long ago. As international language originally was supposed an artificial language which should be specially created for international communication. Also in the XVII-XVIII centuries attempts to create the artificial universal written language – a pazigraph were made.

It was supposed that such artificial, rather, planned language has to be Esperanto. According to the idea, Esperanto was intended to serve as a universal international language, the second (after the native) for each educated person. The use of a neutral (not ethnical) and easy to study language could raise interlingual contacts to qualitatively new level. However, in practice the idea of ​​an artificial language proved to be unsustainable, and only negligible part of humanity knows this language.

At the same time, the process of globalization is gaining every year more and more momentum, and the need for a language of international communication continues to grow.

International language is a language that can be used to communicate by a significant number of people around the world. For designation of this concept as the term “a language of global importance” also is used. In the modern world it is allocated from 7 to 10 international languages. The border between international languages and languages of international communication is indistinct. After World War II, and especially since the early 90's of the XX century (coinciding with the date of the disintegration of the USSR), English has become the most widespread international language.

Languages​​, which are considered international, must have to possess the following characteristics:
• A large number of people consider this language native.
• Among those for whom this is not their native language, there is a large number of people who speak it as a foreign or second language.
• The language is spoken in many countries on several continents and in different cultural circles.
• In many countries this language is studied at school as foreign.

• This language is used as official language by the international organizations, at the international conferences and in major international companies.

Historic facts testify that in Antiquity the Ancient Greek language was as international, later, the Latin language was the major international language which was used during more than one thousand years for the international communication in all spheres of human activity. It was used for negotiations, conclusions of commercial trade deals, scientific research papers were written in it.

In the XVI - XVII centuries Spanish was used as international. At the beginning of XVIII century French became the most important language of the international communication in Europe. In the XIX century, the German language acquired a great importance because of the high achievements of German scientists at that time. Simultaneously the development of English and Spanish was going as international languages, thanks to the colonies of these countries scattered around the world. At the end of the XX century English was approved as the major international language. In socialist countries the most important international language became Russian, which was studied in the schools of all countries of the socialist camp.

The status of an international language is volatile and unstable. With time, some languages ​​are given the status of international, others lose it due to a combination of demographic, geographic, cultural, and, that is especially important recently, economic factors.

Most international language became such due to colonial activities of small states (mother countries) as in the neighboring regions (Russian, German, Chinese) and on other continents (Portuguese, Spanish, English). Thus, the previously popular Greek and Latin have lost this function long ago. Some languages​​, such as Italian, Dutch, Swedish, Polish, Turkish, found it for very short-term period. German which had important international significance at the beginning of the XX century, actually lost function of international in favor of Russian and/or English even in regions where once it has traditional spread (Poland, Slovakia, Galicia). At the same time, a number of languages strengthened their international positions recently. Among them primarily we can consider the Chinese, the largest by the number of its speakers in the world, to a lesser extent Hindi. It is remarkable that the Spanish language steadily keeps its function as international for more than five centuries, and even somewhat strengthened the positions since the beginning of the XXI century.

Contemporary international languages ​​can be considered:

Rank	Language	Native	the Second	Total speakers
1	English	410 million	more than 1,5 billion	more than  2,5 billion
2	Spanish	420 million	up to 80 million	up to 500 million
3	Russian	170 million	up to 125 million	up to 295 million
4	Arabic	240 million	up to 40 million	up to 280 million
5	Portuguese	178 million	up to 10 million	up to 188 million
6	French	80 million	up to 120 million	up to 200 million

However, the tendency shows that in the short term, English will continue to lead among international languages ​​and eventually become the sole language of international communication, if more precisely, a uniform language of Humanity.

This tendency is supported by the progress of the global processes on the planet, and also by projects of harmonization and unification of Mankind. In this regard, it is worth mentioning the target set, recorded in the Medium-Term Strategy of UNESCO, such as "education during the whole life for all", as well as a course on the formation of the “global citizenship" or World Philosophical Forum "Citizenship of the Earth-XXI».

Thus, the language is becoming increasingly important in further destiny and the stable future of all the peoples of our planet.