Open AccessLanguage Classification in The Ethnologue and its Consequences
Author(s) -
Sarah Cornwell
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
proceedings of the annual conference of cais
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2562-7589
DOI - 10.29173/cais1104
Subject(s) - linguistics , criticism , political science , philosophy , law
The Ethnologue is a widely used classificatory standard for the world’s 7000+ natural languages. However, the motives and processes used by The Ethnologue’s governing body, SIL International, have come under criticism by linguists. This paper investigates how The Ethnologue answers the question “What is a language?” through the theoretical lens presented by Bowker and Star in Sorting Things Out (1999) and presents some consequences of those classificatory decisions.