Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T00:28:55.388Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Language Strategists: Redefining Political Frontiers on the Basis of Linguistic Choices

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Brian Weinstein
Brian Weinstein
Affiliation:
Howard University
Get access

Abstract

The decision to use and develop a low-status language in translations and creative works is often based on a desire to provide symbols that will assist the efforts of political leaders to challenge existing national and ethnic frontiers and to create new groups loyal to different institutions. New frontiers alter the relationships between peoples and also affect patterns of access to power and wealth within a group. Writers, translators, dictionary makers, and other literary figures who innovate for this reason should be called “language strategists.” Although primarily moved by a creative and artistic spirit, these persons are often intimately associated with national and ethnic movements because they share the interests of the political elites who lead them. This conscious or unconscious alliance is essential in the creation of ethnic and national identities.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , April 1979 , pp. 345 - 364
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1979

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Fishman, Joshua A., Language and Nationalism: Two Integrative Essays (Rowley, Mass: Newbury House 1972)Google Scholar; Horowitz, Donald L., “Ethnic Identity,” in Gla-zer, Nathan and Moynihan, Daniel P., eds., Ethnicity: Theory and Experience (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1975), 111–40.Google Scholar

2 Lapesa, Rafael, Historia de la lengua española (6th ed.; Madrid: Escelicer 1965), 169, 172.Google Scholar

3 Despalatovic, Elinor Murray, Ljudevit Gaj and the Illyrian Movement (Boulder, Colo.: East European Quarterly, distributed by Columbia University Press 1975), 93.Google Scholar

4 Crowther, , Grammar and Vocabulary of the Yoruba Tongue (London: Seeley's 1852), 1.Google Scholar

5 Bambose, Ayo, Yoruba Orthography—a Linguistic Appraisal with Suggestions for Reform (Ibadan: Ibadan University 1965), 3.Google Scholar

6 Cited in Lambley, Kathleen, The Teaching and Cultivation of the French Language in England During Tudor and Stuart Times—With an Introductory Chapter on the Preceding Period (Manchester: Manchester University Press 1920), 18.Google Scholar

7 “Preface,” An American Dictionary of the English Language, reprinted in Babbidge, Homer D. Jr, ed., Noah Webster on Being American: Selected Writings, 1783–1828 (New York: Frederick A. Praeger 1967), 173Google Scholar; emphasis in original.

8 For the theoretical underpinnings, see Barth, Fredrik, “Introduction,” in Barth, , ed., Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (Boston: Little, Brown 1969), 9–38.Google Scholar Crawford Young calls a person who creates and manipulates cultural symbols of any nature a “cultural entrepreneur.” See Young, , The Politics of Cultural Pluralism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press 1976), 45–46.Google Scholar

9 Ferguson, Charles A., “Diglossia,” in Word, XV (August 1959), 325–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fishman, Joshua A., Sociolinguistics: A Brief Introduction (Rowley, Mass: Newbury House 1970), 75–82.Google Scholar Many types of diglossia are possible.

10 Tocqueville, Alexis de, “How Towards the Middle of the Eighteenth Century Men of Letters Took the Lead in Politics and the Consequences of this New Development,” reprinted in de Huszar, George B., ed., The Intellectuals: A Controversial Portrait (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press 1960), 14.Google Scholar

11 Gurr, Ted Robert, Why Men Rebel (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1970), 46.Google Scholar Other motivating forces are at work, too.

12 In northern India, language has served to consolidate the group across class lines. See Brass, Paul R., Language, Religion and Politics in North India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1974), 22, 27.Google Scholar

13 See Hyde, Douglas, “The Necessity for De-Anglicizing Ireland,” reprinted in Duffy, Charles Gavan, Ingerson, George, and Hyde, Douglas, The Revival of Irish Literature (New York: Lemma 1973), 117–61.Google Scholar

14 Ferguson, Charles A., “Language Development,” in Fishman, Joshua A., Ferguson, Charles A., and Gupta, Jyotirindra Das, eds., Language Problems of Developing Nations (New York: Wiley 1968), 27–35.Google Scholar

15 Heath, Shirley Brice, Telling Tongues: Language Policy in Mexico—Colony to Nation (New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University 1972).Google Scholar

16 Hair, P.E.H., The Early Study of Nigerian Languages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1967), 4Google Scholar, n. 1; Schmidt, P. W., S.V.D., , “The Use of the Vernacular in Education in Africa,” in Africa, in (April 1930), 137–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Dolet, , “La Manière de bien traduire d'une langue en aultre,” in Cary, E., Les grands traducteurs français (Geneva: Librairie de I'Université 1963), 2–5Google Scholar; Christie, Richard Copley, Etienne Dolet: The Martyr of the Renaissance, 1508–1546—A Biography (London: Macmillan 1899).Google Scholar

18 Ray, Punya Sloka, Language Standardization (The Hague: Mouton 1963), 70.Google Scholar Cf. Byron, Janet, Selection Among Alternates in Language Standardization (The Hague: Mouton 1976), 17–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Dante, , De Vulgari Eloquentia, trans, by Ferrers Howell, A. G. (London: Rebel Press 1973), 43.Google Scholar

20 Cited by Despalatovié (fn. 3), 91. Also see Bormanshinov, Arash, “The Illyrian Movement as Reflected in the Serbo-Croatian Literature and Language,” Ph.D. diss. (University of Pennsylvania 1958).Google Scholar

21 Cited in Smith, Preserved, The Life and Letters of Martin Luther (New York: Barnes and Noble 1911; reprinted 1968), 266.Google Scholar

22 Judges 12:5–6.

23 Lunt, Horace G., “The Creation of Standard Macedonian: Some Facts and Attitudes,” in Anthropological Linguistics, 1 (May 1959), 19–26.Google ScholarKloss, Heinz calls this creative language-building “Ausbau.” “Abstand Languages and Ausbau Languages,” in Anthropological Linguistics, IX (October 1967), 29–41.Google Scholar

24 Brass (fn. 12), 309, 326–27.

25 Luther, , “On Translating: An Open Letter 1530,” reprinted in Jacobs, H. E., ed., Works of Martin Luther (Philadelphia: A. J. Holman and Castle Press 1931), 15.Google Scholar

26 Dante (fn. 19), 15.

27 Interview, Montreal, March 2, 1976.

28 Shanmugam, S. V., “Modernization in Tamil,” Anthropological Linguistics, XVII, (February 1973), 53–67.Google Scholar

29 See Fellman, Jack, “The Role of Eliezer Ben Yehuda in the Revival of the Hebrew Language: An Assessment,” in Fishman, Joshua A., ed., Advances in Language Planning (The Hague: Mouton 1974), 427–55.Google Scholar

30 Vinogradov, , The History of the Russian Literary Language from the Seventeenth Century to the Nineteenth, translated, condensed, and introduced by Thomas, Lawrence L. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press 1969), 128.Google Scholar

31 Djias, Milovan, Njegoš: Poet-Prince-Bishop (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World 1966).Google Scholar Also see Lord, Albert B., “The Nineteenth-Century Revival of National Literatures: Karadžic, Njegoš, Radičević, the Illyrians, and Prešeren,” in Review of National Literatures, V (Spring 1974), 101–11.Google Scholar

32 Babbidge (fn. 7), “Introduction,” 3.

33 Bormanshinov (fn. 20), 110.

34 Vernadsky, George V., “Pushkin and the Decembrists,” in Cross, Samuel H. and Simmons, Ernest J., eds., Centennial Essays for Pushkin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1937), 45–76.Google Scholar

35 Pushkin, , “On Nationalism in Literature,” in Proffer, Carl R., ed. and trans., The Critical Prose of Alexander Pushkin (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press 1969), 41–42.Google Scholar

36 Das, Sisirkumar, Early Bengali Prose: Carey to Vidyasagar (Calcutta: Bookland Private 1966).Google Scholar

37 d'Entrèves, A. P., Dante as a Political Thinker (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1952).Google Scholar

38 Dante (fn. 19), 46.

39 Chubb, Thomas Caldecot, Dante and His World (Boston: Little, Brown 1966), 764.Google Scholar

40 Brewer, D. S., “Images of Chaucer 1386–1900,” in Brewer, , ed., Chaucer and Chaucerians: Critical Studies in Middle English (London: Nelson 1970), 224.Google Scholar

41 Tout, T. F., Chapters in the Administrative History of Mediaeval England (Manchester: Manchester University Press 1928, reprinted 1967), 264.Google Scholar

42 Thrupp, Sylvia L., The Merchant Class of Medieval London (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1948), 158.Google Scholar

43 Chaucer, , “Treatise on the Astrolabe,” reprinted in Fisher, John H., ed., The Complete Poetry and Prose of Geoffrey Chaucer (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston 1977). 999.Google Scholar

44 Shirley, cited in Spurgen, Caroline F. E., Five Hundred Years of Chaucer Criticism and Allusion 1357–1900, I (New York: Russell and Russell 1960), 49.Google Scholar

45 Gaertner, Otto, John Shirley—Sein Leben und Werken (Halle: Ehrhardt Karras 1904), 62.Google Scholar

46 Blake, N. F., Caxton and His World (London: Andre Deutsch 1969), 101, 213.Google Scholar

47 Commager, Henry Steele, “Introduction,” Noah Webster's American Spelling Book (New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University 1962), 5, 10.Google Scholar

48 Joshua A. Fishman's lectures at the Linguistic Institute, July-August 1977, helped me to understand the transformation of language group to identity group into control group.

49 Haugen, Einar, Language Conflict and Language Planning: The Case of Modern Norwegian (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1966), 114CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Koht, Halvdan, Education of an Historian (New York: Robert Speller and Sons 1957), 205–15.Google Scholar

50 Neustupný, , “The Modernization of the Japanese System of Communication,” Lan guage in Society, in (April 1974), 33–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar I also learned a great deal about the nature of politics and language in Professor Neustupnyacute;'s course, “Language Planning, Linguistics and Language Change,” at the 1977 Linguistic Institute, University of Hawaii.

51 Cf. Gumperz, John and Das Gupta, J., “Language, Communication, and Control in North India,” in Gumperz, , Language in Social Groups (Stanford: Stanford University Press 1971), 142–45.Google Scholar

52 On this subject, I have benefited from Henry and Renee Kahane, “The Decline and Hidden Survival of Prestige Languages” (Papers of the 1978 Georgetown University Round Table, forthcoming).

53 Haugen, (fn. 49), 18.Google Scholar

54 Yeats, W. B., Autobiographies: Reveries Over Childhood and Youth and the Trembling of the Veil (London: Macmillan 1926), 270.Google Scholar