Nationalism, Language and Multiculturalism
• Most of us in the industrialized countries of North
America, Western Europe, and Australasia tend to
take the concept of the nation-state and its
associated national standard language for granted,
but, in fact, both of these are the outcome of
centuries of struggles among competing political
and economic groups to advance their own
interests” (Foley 2001: 398).
Emergence of Nation-state
• French revolution (1789-94) and industrial
revolution: (end of 1800’s)
• Expansion of European ideology
• Dismantling of kinship ties and village
A shift in the nature of political
communication (Tonnes, 1955)
• Gemeinschaft “community” to Gesellschaft
“association”
• Gemeinschaft: likeness, share property of
kinship: village
•
---Geertz: “primordial attachments”
• Gesellschaft: willed, free chosen acts of
association: Nation-state
Imagined Communities (Benedict
Anderson, 1983)
• Imagining oneself and the rest of the
population of a nation as a bounded
community
• Willed association
• Rights and duties
Basis of association in a NationState
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Diffusion of national ideologies
--Media
Development of standard language
--exclusion of other languages
Institutionalization of a national language
-- literacy, education of citizens
National language and national
ideology (Gellner)
• A Yimas village (Gemeinschaft
community)
•
produces a competent Yimas
• Papua New Guinean nation-state
(Gesellschaft community)
•
produces an effective Papua New
Guinean
Forces that produce a national
language
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Political
--political elite’s reflection
--USA Example: AAVE versus SAE
--attitudes towards multilingualism
• Economic
• --corporations, influence, wealth
Multilingualism and nation-state
• Problems: Multilingual entities
• --fractionalization of interests: Czechoslovakia
• Example Indonesia: One nation, one people, one
language
• --Tribal, ethnic problems: Rwanda and Yugoslavia
• --Regional fractionalism: Somalia
Geertz’s concept of “primordial
attachments”
• Failure to go beyond citizen;s kinship and
village ties
• National language replaces primordial
attachments
• The spread of nationalistic messages
• --media: written and electronic, educational
systems
State and nation
• State: any region governed under a central
administration, with its own legal and
political institutions
• Nation: any community of people who see
themselves as an ethnic and culturally
(linguistically) unit, in contrast to other
groups of people surrounding them
Multilingualism
• Modern nations and multilingualism
• The result of contact
• 5000 to 8000 languages worldwide
• USA: 27 ethnic groups: 230 languages
Bakhtin (1981)
• Centripetal forces of language:
---political and institutional forces
---Imposition of one variety code over others
• Centrifugal forces of language:
---forces pushing speakers away from a common
code or language
---multilingualism
---differentiation
Tewa, Arizona (Kroskrity 1993)
• Long history of contact (Hopi)
• Links between identity and language
• Some symbols only available to Tewa
• Language medium of identity expression
Catalan, Spain (Woodlard 1989)
• Political control by central government
• Imposition of language code
---Centripetal forces: school system, media
• High status in Catalonia
Basis of Linguistic Problems
• Economic and political
• Result in war, genocide
---Yugoslavia, Rwanda
---Hutus and Tootsies
Man: Could you tell me where the French test is?
Recep: Pardon? (“Pardon?”)
Man: Could you tell me where the French test is?
Recep: En Français (“In French”)
Man: I have the right to be addressed in English
by the government of Quebec according to Bill
101.
Recept: (To a third person) Qu’est-ce qu’il dit?
(“What’s he saying?”)
Language Status (Multilingual
Nations)
• Canada and India
• Issues contributing to language status:
---Ethnicity
---Race
---Political and social power of native
speakers
India
• Indo-Aryan (74), Dravidian (24), AustroAsiatic (1,5) and Tibeto-Burman (0.7)
• Hindi official language + 14 state official
languages
• English elite language and the second
language of millions
• Mass communication affects minority
languages
Kamala Das
I don’t know politics but I know the names
Of those in power, and can repeat them like
Days of week, or names of months, beginning with
Nehru. I am Indian, very brown, born in
Malabar, I speak three languages, write in
Two, dream in one. Don’t write in English, they said,
English is not your mother tongue. Why not leave
Me alone, critics, friends, visiting cousins,
Every one of you? Why not let me speak in
Any other language I like? The language I speak
Becomes mine, its distortions, its queerness
All mine, mine alone…. (In Valentine, 2004)
Canada
• Two different cultural and linguistic
identities(linguistic majority French in Quebec)
• Economic and politics controlled by Anglo
interests until the 1970’s
• Calls for independence
• Official language act1969 : bilingual education,
• Referendum 1995
• Reversal of fortunes in Quebec
Situational Use of Language
• Quebec situation
• Francophones, Anglophones and
Allophones,
• language according to situation
• Reflects attitudes
Summary
• The rise of the nation-state correlated with the
development of standard languages
• Replacement of community attachments of kin and
village to willed free associations of citizens
• Standard and national languages play a role in
promulgating a national ideology
• In all societies some people speak more than one
language
• Conflict are based on economic and political
conditions but appear as linguistic issues
• India and canada good examples of multilingualism: