Climate Change, Responsibilities, and Defeatism and Complacency

16 p.

A Game-Theoreteic Analysis of Minority Language Use in Multilingual Societies

This chapter studies multilingual democratic societies with highly developed economies. These societies are assumed to have two languages with official status: language A, spoken by every individual, and language B, spoken by the bilingual minority. We emphasize that language rights are important, but the survival of the minority language B depends mainly on the actual use bilinguals make of B. The purpose of the present chapter is to study some of the factors affecting the bilingual speakers language choice behaviour. Our view is that languages with their speech communities compete for speakers just as fi rms compete for market share. Thus, the con ict among the minority languages in these societies does not take the rough expressions such as those studied in Desmet et al. (2012). Here the con flict is more subtle. We model highly plausible language choice situations by means of choice procedures and non-cooperative games, each with different types of information. We then study the determinants of the bilinguals ' strategic behaviour with regard to language. We observe that the bilinguals' use of B is shaped, essentially, by linguistic conventions and social norms that are developed in situations of language contact.

The scientific legacy of the "Instituto Eduardo Torroja" in Bilbao (1960-1980)

By means of this analysis, we have endeavored to evaluate and understand both the influence that the IETcc started to bear on scientific progress in Bilbao, mainly during the 1960s and the 1970s, as well as the determined efforts of the local financial and industrial elite of the time to transform Bilbao into the great metropolis of the north, i.e. the economic capital of that part of Spain, using as a model, among other metropolises, New York, the financial capital of America, and Pittsburg, the industrial capital. The various means to accomplish this have been studied: from the institutions of investigation, exposition and information which would initiate the longed for scientific progress, to the pathways for reproducing the fascinating American way.