Multicultural information dynamics: the Internet and the end of lingua franca illiteracy

Abstract

How do people react when presented with choices of foreign language web sites on the Internet originating in cultures unfamiliar to them? Do information seekers routinely examine retrieved resources written in languages they do not read, or do they skip incomprehensible texts as unusable or too much trouble? This paper explores the linguistic reasons people give for choosing one web site over another among multicultural/multilingual possibilities, and contrasts it with statistical analysis of their actual behavior.

This is the third article in a series describing the information-seeking behavior of a group of eighty-four academic and public reference librarians from Egypt and the USA. The theoretical basis of the research is straightforward. The Internet is enabling a process of global cross-pollination of ideas, where the barriers imposed by multiple languages to accessing multicultural thought are being lessened or removed by online translation engines. The convergence of masses of users on the World Wide Web churns them together in an interaction of ethno-cultural groups contributing collectively—in ways unique to their distinct cultures—to the development of a multicultural information dynamic. This amalgamation of the requirements of many cultures is a natural part of the evolution of the information infrastructure, and the present research examines this phenomenon at the fundamental level of asking what motivates seekers of information to move from one site to another in an increasingly multilingual environment.

The research has implications for English speakers and non-English speakers alike, as well as multilingual scholarship. While English speakers will now have the option to tap into other cultural modes of expression, the other side of this coin is equally noteworthy. Large segments of the world population, unable or unwilling to master the English language, are being set free from lingua franca illiteracy.

Paul L. Hover

Paul L. Hover (MA, MSLIS) is an Assistant Professor and Cataloging Librarian at Virginia Tech, University Libraries, USA. Paul earned area studies degrees from Princeton University, the Universities of Amsterdam and Utrecht, and Auckland University, and graduated in 2004 from the Graduate School of Library and Information Science of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He speaks eleven languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and Persian, and is researching cross-cultural information seeking behavior.

Dr. Jun Lu

Jun Lu (Ph.D.) is an Assistant Professor at the American University, Washington, USA. Jun received his Ph.D. degree in Statistics from University of Missouri-Columbia, USA in 2004. He has been a tenure-track assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at American University since 2004. His research interests include: multidisciplinary statistical application and consulting; Bayesian method and its applications, and statistical education.

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