A sneak peek at the future of what we have got used to calling (a) language

Abstract

In this text, I propose to let my imagination run riot about what the future has in store regarding language(s). I undertake this admittedly risky task on the basis of an educated guess and already available clues from what is actually going on. Starting from the premise that what we call language(s) are semiotic reflexes and their by-products of historically given geopolitical configurations, I claim that the fast-changing geopolitics as well as the sweeping changes under way in the way the world is currently configured and constantly being reconfigured must give us cause for pause and reason to opt for a major rethink. It must give us a foretaste of what awaits us down the line in regard to what language, in a not-too-distant future, seems destined to look like. Such speculative flights of imagination have, as I shall argue, the capacity to free up our minds and get them prepared to deal with radical changes, many of which as yet far beyond our wildest dreams that I feel are just around the corner language-wise.