Culture and Language: Europe lecture 7: Languages of Europe
31/03/21
1.1 Language and nations
- Largely the idea of how languages can be used to create a community, and are used in
creating nations
- Many maps that show languages spoken in Europe are very representative – you can
clearly see where one language borders the other and those often also represent the real
borders of the countries
- So largely, there is a one language-one country correspondence (still very common and
popular in European discourse and the EU discourse)
- Still, there are cases where it is one country-one official language, however in reality
there are many different varieties of that language within the country borders
→ e.g. Italy: official language is Italian, however, there are certain varieties in
Italy, which are not substandard varieties or even dialects of Italian – they are
separate varieties. They are all descendent from vulgar Latin, but they are not
necessarily mutually intelligible at this point; e.g. during the Italian unification
very small number of people could actually speak Italian
Language and nation building in Europe
- Different ways in which language can help build or create a nation
- “’Language’ was invented in Europe” (Gal 2006) – the way that we understand
language and the way that we use that term in our discourse actually was invented in
Europe
- “Constructed nature of national language groups” (Wright 2011) – interested in how
the constructive nature of national language groups comes about and what that tells us
about those groups
Visualisation of how language developed and created the environment or the
circumstance in which it could play role in nation-building:
- In the late Middle Ages, many different languages were spoken, and people were aware
that they were different languages, but most people only spoke their own local variety
- 16th-18th century period: correctness ideology arises; more people become interested in
what the ‘right’ way of speaking is, what the norms of their language variety are, and
what are the main differences between their variety and another and why theirs is better
, - 18th-19th century: this idea of a “correct” language inspires the fact that you can use that
correct language as an instrument to pursue certain political or social goals; the
emphasis of a particular language that as a boundary of community can help mobilize
people
- 19th-20th century: the search for one, best variety is so prominent, that a standard
language ideology is still the main ideology that we find in Europe today
European and local levels
- How those 3 elements interacted to better understand the process of constructing
national language groups and understand the relationship between nation-state and
national language
- Starting in the Middle Ages religion, war, and diplomacy required communication at a
“European” level
→ Political and social organization were more at the “European” level, and they
usually had a shared language (in most cases it was lingua franca)
→ Nobility and clergy used lingua francas, but for most people, their lives were at
the local level – they spoke their own local variety, there was little mobility
So most people did not really have a really good reason to learn many
languages, their life was very local
→ At the European level there was, of course, some communication going on, but
mostly whenever a European effort had to be made (e.g. in times of war or due
to trade)
- In the 16th-17th century a new level rises, between that “European” and local level
→ From the political organization side, people in power recognised that a class of
administrators was useful (in-between the crown and the people)
→ Thus, for the crown to be understood by ‘normal’ people, they created a new
language, shared by all
, → To make sure that language was efficient, linguistic standardization came into
play; the language that was standardized was usually the language own the
capital, which then became the state language
→ Within social organization, the development of the printing press and the
reformation led to vernacular varieties becoming written varieties
Writing and printing a certain language is much more efficient than
printing a particular text in lots of different varieties – good from
economical perspective as well
- In the 18 -19 century, following the Age of Revolution, there is a change in society –
th th
the people became the power
→ The sovereign people obviously needed to communicate with each other (a
strong sense for shared language was present): having a shared language was
imperative in terms of raising political support
→ Language in this period became not only something that was useful (a way of
communication/organizing people) but also establishing boundaries of
communities
Role of linguists
- Linguists were used alongside historians and archaeologists to establish ancient roots
and rights
- Proof of a longstanding (linguistic) community could support a claim for a separate
homeland. Linguists were doing this in two ways:
→ Collecting folktales and fairytales that established how a certain group had their
own myth of origin, their own history or genealogy – a certain story that could
be tracked through time that could show that it had originated somewhere so
that people could claim to a certain ancestry, territory, or heritage
→ They were also involved in standardization – they wrote dictionaries and
grammars, establishing the one best variety, and they become interested in
comparing and contrasting different varieties to show the history of the
language – how the current variety came to be from an older variety (which
again might legitimize certain rights to ancestry/territories
Making “language”
- In deciding which variety is the standard variety resulted in making languages – people
became very aware that having your own language makes a case for you having rights
to power, territory, decision-making processes, etc.
- This was done through Ausbau, which Wright explains as “the conscious distancing of
a language from its neighbours on the dialect continuum to mark political division”
- Through language planning this allowed for two different varieties to become further
set apart, so that certain rights and values that were associated with a proper (standard)
language were then associated with those varieties, whereas previously they were only
dialects
- Abstand vs Ausbau languages: the first is structurally different, and the latter is
socially/politically different
- Writing dictionaries and grammars, linguists were an important part of (national)
language planning. This step of corpus planning allowed for languages to be made
