Links that speak: The global language network and its association with global fame
Languages vary enormously in global importance because of historical, demographic, political, and technological forces. However, beyond simple measures of population and economic power, there has been no rigorous quantitative way to define the global influence of languages. Here we use the structure...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
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National Academy of Sciences (U.S.)
2015
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/97587 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6031-5982 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6765-168X |
| _version_ | 1811076174914256896 |
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| author | Ronen, Shahar Vespignani, Alessandro Pinker, Steven Goncalves, Bruno Hu, Kevin Hidalgo Ramaciotti, Cesar A. |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Media Laboratory |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Media Laboratory Ronen, Shahar Vespignani, Alessandro Pinker, Steven Goncalves, Bruno Hu, Kevin Hidalgo Ramaciotti, Cesar A. |
| author_sort | Ronen, Shahar |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Languages vary enormously in global importance because of historical, demographic, political, and technological forces. However, beyond simple measures of population and economic power, there has been no rigorous quantitative way to define the global influence of languages. Here we use the structure of the networks connecting multilingual speakers and translated texts, as expressed in book translations, multiple language editions of Wikipedia, and Twitter, to provide a concept of language importance that goes beyond simple economic or demographic measures. We find that the structure of these three global language networks (GLNs) is centered on English as a global hub and around a handful of intermediate hub languages, which include Spanish, German, French, Russian, Portuguese, and Chinese. We validate the measure of a language’s centrality in the three GLNs by showing that it exhibits a strong correlation with two independent measures of the number of famous people born in the countries associated with that language. These results suggest that the position of a language in the GLN contributes to the visibility of its speakers and the global popularity of the cultural content they produce. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T10:17:33Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/97587 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | en_US |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T10:17:33Z |
| publishDate | 2015 |
| publisher | National Academy of Sciences (U.S.) |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/975872022-09-30T20:08:14Z Links that speak: The global language network and its association with global fame Ronen, Shahar Vespignani, Alessandro Pinker, Steven Goncalves, Bruno Hu, Kevin Hidalgo Ramaciotti, Cesar A. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Media Laboratory Program in Media Arts and Sciences (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Ronen, Shahar Hu, Kevin Hidalgo, Cesar A. Languages vary enormously in global importance because of historical, demographic, political, and technological forces. However, beyond simple measures of population and economic power, there has been no rigorous quantitative way to define the global influence of languages. Here we use the structure of the networks connecting multilingual speakers and translated texts, as expressed in book translations, multiple language editions of Wikipedia, and Twitter, to provide a concept of language importance that goes beyond simple economic or demographic measures. We find that the structure of these three global language networks (GLNs) is centered on English as a global hub and around a handful of intermediate hub languages, which include Spanish, German, French, Russian, Portuguese, and Chinese. We validate the measure of a language’s centrality in the three GLNs by showing that it exhibits a strong correlation with two independent measures of the number of famous people born in the countries associated with that language. These results suggest that the position of a language in the GLN contributes to the visibility of its speakers and the global popularity of the cultural content they produce. 2015-06-30T17:08:08Z 2015-06-30T17:08:08Z 2014-12 2014-06 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 0027-8424 1091-6490 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/97587 Ronen, Shahar, Bruno Goncalves, Kevin Z. Hu, Alessandro Vespignani, Steven Pinker, and Cesar A. Hidalgo. “Links That Speak: The Global Language Network and Its Association with Global Fame.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111, no. 52 (December 15, 2014): E5616–E5622. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6031-5982 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6765-168X en_US http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1410931111 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use. application/pdf National Academy of Sciences (U.S.) National Academy of Sciences (U.S.) |
| spellingShingle | Ronen, Shahar Vespignani, Alessandro Pinker, Steven Goncalves, Bruno Hu, Kevin Hidalgo Ramaciotti, Cesar A. Links that speak: The global language network and its association with global fame |
| title | Links that speak: The global language network and its association with global fame |
| title_full | Links that speak: The global language network and its association with global fame |
| title_fullStr | Links that speak: The global language network and its association with global fame |
| title_full_unstemmed | Links that speak: The global language network and its association with global fame |
| title_short | Links that speak: The global language network and its association with global fame |
| title_sort | links that speak the global language network and its association with global fame |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/97587 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6031-5982 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6765-168X |
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