Is language a function of your networking?

David Gravel is quoted as thinking so given the massive efficiency to shared languages in a global world.  It's a tidy and nice argument.

If you picked two people at random off the face of the earth and asked them to pick one language in which to communicate with someone they knew nothing about, which language would each person choose? The language they’d pick would depend on a series of “reciprocal expectations” — best guesses not just about which language you suppose the other person speaks but which language he thinks you suppose he will speak — which depends, in turn, on which one you think he thinks you suppose he will speak. And so on, until your head swims.

In today’s globalizing world, the probability is increasing that two random people would choose English for their best chance at unplanned linguistic coordination. And this isn’t merely a thought experiment: it’s being played out, with more information among the parties, in the decisions of hundreds of millions of people now learning English as a second language.

It reminds me a bit of David Foster Wallace's wonderful argument that grammar, too, is a function of your social setting (the pre-SNA way of saying networking).

You'll need a Harper's Subscription to view the link, but you should have one of those anyway.

These arguments make me wonder if, given this powerful network effect protecting the English language, there's any need to mandate a single language in the U.S., Britain. I'm also wondering just how the Quebecois intend to maintain French over time.