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Economic Costs of Linguistically Alternative Communication Systems: The Case of Uzbekistan∗

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Toussaint Hočevar*
Affiliation:
University of New Orleans

Extract

Before engaging in empirical treatment inherent in the title, I will outline the model on which my analysis is based. I begin with the observation that natural languages are codes which groups of people have conveniently adopted for the purposes of communicating and of information storing. The costs, both explicit and implicit, associated with a given code can be divided into two categories.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © 1982 by the Association for the Study of the Nationalities (USSR and East Europe) Inc. 

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References

1. Cf. Arrow, Kenneth J., The Limits of Organization (New York: W.W. Norton, 1974), pp. 249-67.Google Scholar

2. For the notion of linguistic domains see Fishman, Joshua A., Language and Sociocultural Change (Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press, 1972), pp. 248-49.Google Scholar

3. Cf. Hočevar, Toussaint, “Equilibria in Linguistic Minority Markets,” Kyklos, 28/2 (1975), pp. 337-57; and “Les aspects économiques de la dynamique des langues naturelles,” paper presented at the symposium Langue et Economie, University of Montreal, 1978.Google Scholar

4. Based on the lesson plan published in Maorif va Madaniyat, Sept. 10, 1974, p. 4. I am indebted for this information to Professor M. Mobin Shorish.Google Scholar

5. In persuing educational literature I have come across a statement pertaining to the situation in Georgia, where because of the extra burden of learning Russian, Georgian children in fact stay in school a year longer than their Russian counterparts. Nigel Grant, Soviet Education (Penguin Books, 1968), p. 35.Google Scholar

6. Accounting for United States Economic Growth, 1929–1969 (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1974).Google Scholar

7. The weights used by Dennison are as follows: for persons with no education, 75; elementary 1-4, 89; elementary 5-7, 97; elementary 8, 100; high school 1-3, 111; high school 4, 124; college 1-3, 147; college 4, 189; college 5 or more, 219. Op. cit., p. 44.Google Scholar

8. Norodnoye khozyaystvo SSSR v 1979 g., p. 29.Google Scholar

9. Cf. Feshback, Murray, “Prospects for Outmigration from Central Asia and Kazakhstan in the Next Decade,” in Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, Soviet Economy in a Time of Change, Vol. 1, pp. 656709.Google Scholar

10. I. Rahimova considers the learning of Russian by non-Russian peoples the “greatest weapon at the hand of our party in the process of unification of all Soviet People,” in “Mashvarati nuallimony zaboni rusi,” Maorif va Madaniyat, March 30, 1968, p. 3, as quoted by M. Mobin Shorish, “The Pedagogical, Linguistic, and Logistical Problems of Teaching Russian to the Local Soviet Central Asians,” Slavic Review, 35/3 (Sept. 1976), p. 446.CrossRefGoogle Scholar