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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 30/12/2015, SPi
GUARDIANS OF LANGUAGE
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Guardians of Language
Twenty Voices Through History
Florian Coulmas
1
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3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
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© Florian Coulmas 2016
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2016
Impression: 1
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address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
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Contents
Preface ix
Introduction: The politics of language xi
1 Alcuin of York 1
2 Sibawayhi ﺳﻴﺒﻮﻳﻪ 19
3 Dante Alighieri 31
4 King Sejong the Great 47
5 Elio Antonio de Nebrija 61
6 Cardinal Richelieu 77
7 Catherine the Great 89
8 Adamántios Koraïs (`ÆØ ˚æÆ ) 103
9 Noah Webster 115
10 Jacob Grimm 127
11 Eliezer Ben-Yehuda 139
12 Ludwik Lazarus Zamenhof 155
13 Ueda Kazutoshi 169
14 Vladimir Ilich Lenin 183
15 Mustafa Kemal Atatürk 199
16 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi 213
17 Zhou Enlai 229
18 Pope Paul VI 245
19 Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana 259
20 Léopold Sédar Senghor 275
Coda: Lessons learnt 291
References 309
Index of names 335
Index of subjects 341
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Preface
T
he idea for this book came to me on the sidelines of the
Sociolinguistics Symposium in Berlin in the summer of
2012. The publisher of Language Policy had provided the
members of the editorial board a pleasant opportunity to meet by
graciously inviting us to lunch. The founding editor of this
excellent journal, Bernard Spolsky, was there, as well as Elana
Shohamy and Kendall King, the editors. Among the board mem-
bers present were Christine Helot, Nancy Hornberger, Tommaso
Milani, Theo du Plessis, Piet van Avermaet, Stephen May, Teresa
McCarty, and Leigh Oakes. It was a congenial gathering. The
weather was fine, allowing us to sit outside on a terrace, chatting
away about this and that: about how the journal had reached a
readership within a relatively short time, about topics for thematic
issues, about academic publishing in general, impact factors, etc.,
and how to make the journal even more attractive.
At some point, Elana asked what we thought about the special
section of ‘Questions for . . . ’ they had recently introduced, discuss-
ing wider issues of language policy with prominent scholars in the
field, such as Joan Rubin, Michael Clyne, and Bob Cooper. Could
this section be continued? Who should be asked to answer ques-
tions? Any volunteers? ‘How about Dante or Cardinal Richelieu?’,
I suggested in jest. ‘You’re kidding,’ Elana replied cheerfully. ‘But
no’, I said, ‘“interviews with the departed” could be an interesting
exercise.’ We toyed with this notion lightheartedly for a bit, and
then the conversation moved on.
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x
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Introduction
The politics of language
P
olitics is language. This has been acknowledged as far
back as Western thinking about government goes. In
chapter II of the Politics, Aristotle observes that ‘man is
naturally a political animal’ and ‘the only animal that enjoys
the gift of speech’. He continues: ‘it is by speech that we are
enabled to express what is useful for us, and what is hurtful, and
of course what is just and what is unjust: for in this particular,
man differs from other animals, that he alone has a perception of
good and evil, of just and unjust, and it is a participation of these
common sentiments which forms a family and a city’ (Aristotle
1912/2013: 1253a). As he knew more than 2,300 years ago,
language is the central medium of politics. Human society gen-
erally presupposes language, and in particular the capacity to
govern by anything but brute force depends vitally on it. Partici-
pation in the polis is grounded in the ability to express moral
sentiments in a common language. Those who do not share in
that language do not belong. Here, too, Aristotle expressed an
idea that still reverberates today, approvingly quoting the poet’s
saying—‘Tis meet that Greeks should rule barbarians’ (Aristotle
1912/2013: 1252b), that is, the æ ÆæØ who do not speak the
Greek language. Two dimensions of the political nature of
language can be derived from these ideas.
xi
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Introduction
Language regimes
The policy dimension of language—what people say—concerns
language as the medium of politics: how politicians use language
to communicate with the citizenry; how texts are constructed;
what rhetorical means are employed, to what ends. For any social
or economic problem to be put on the political agenda it must be
given a linguistic formulation. In order to enter the political
discussion, objectives such as ‘environmental sustainability’,
‘protection against government surveillance’, or ‘restoring pride
in our beloved country’ must be put into words. Words
exchanged in the political arena are rarely only descriptive and
limited to factual statements, but reflect political values, interests,
and motives.
The polity dimension of language—how people speak—has to
do with how language is employed as a defining criterion of a
polity and hence becomes an object of politics. A pertinent
example is irredentism, a political principle whereby territory is
claimed on the basis of the ethnic and especially linguistic affili-
ation of the citizenry in an area adjacent to another where their
language is the language of power. Giuseppe Mazzini—an Italian
poet, journalist, and war hero (1805–72)—first used the term
when he referred to terre irredente (‘unredeemed soil’) justifying
the establishment in 1919 of the Italian Regency of Carnaro on the
Dalmatian coast, today the Croatian city of Rijeka, because of its
Italian-speaking majority population.
In conjunction with each other, the policy and polity dimensions
of language form what I have elsewhere called ‘language regimes’
(Coulmas 2005), described as a set of constraints on individual
language choices, which consist of habits, legal provisions, and
ideologies. A language regime is a part of the political system that
xii
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xiii
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Introduction
languages are not accorded this status. Given the great number of
languages and the small number of states, it follows that the
linguistically homogeneous state must be exceptional, if it exists
at all. Yet the language regimes of many states provide for a single
official language.
Conflicts
Taken together, these observations imply that state and language
interact in multiple ways that are potentially contentious. Poten-
tially and actually. The polity dimension of language is not
necessarily about conflict; but ‘managing public linguistic space’
(Spolsky 2009) often involves discord, tension, and dispute, as
three instances that occurred while this book was in the making
illustrate.
In February 2014, the Ukrainian parliament revoked a 2012
law ‘On the principles of the state-language policy’, which had
recognized co-official status for Russian in all provinces where it
was spoken by 10 per cent of the population or more, and passed
a motion to make Ukrainian the sole state language. As a conse-
quence, already tense relations between Russia and Ukraine
deteriorated further, which eventually led to the secession/annex-
ation of overwhelmingly Russian-speaking Crimea.
In September 2014, the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi
addressed the United Nations General Assembly in Hindi. Indian
diplomats and many civil servants of the central government
used to do their business in English, but the newly elected PM
ordered the bureaucracy to draft all documents in Hindi, to use
Hindi in official correspondence, and to switch to Hindi on social
media. Modi has for many years been associated with a Hindu
xiv
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xv
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developments have made it possible for ever more and ever smaller
speech communities to apply their languages to modern commu-
nication needs, while huge demographic shifts producing new
complex multilingual urban agglomerations change language
regimes from the inside.
Ideologies
Accordingly, the language regimes of the 195 member states of
the United Nations keep evolving at an accelerating pace. They
are very diverse, and it remains to be seen whether the ongoing
changes will bring about an irreversible decline of diversity, as
feared by many linguists (Brenzinger 2006; Harmon and Loh
2010), and whether these changes will be accompanied by more
controversy or will happen quietly and peacefully. However,
since virtually no unruled territory remains on this planet, lan-
guage looms as a political issue almost everywhere. For, more
often than not, the authorities discriminate in regard to the
language(s) in which they articulate their status and their claim
to power. They pronounce orders, pass laws, accept petitions,
conclude contracts, issue commands, regulate school education,
and conduct their day-to-day business in some languages rather
than in others. While the resultant discrimination goes unnoticed
or is uncontroversial in some settings, it is resisted or serves as
the catalyst of conflict in others. Such differences are the stuff of
ideologies that feed on and instigate discontent—ideologies that
nowadays are strongly focused on minority rights and cultural
self-determination. This was not always so. Every age has its own
ideology that rationalizes and supports the elite’s language regime
or motivates a counter-elite to challenge it.
xvi
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xviii
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xix
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xx
700 800 1200 1300 1400 1500 1600 1700 1800 1900 1950 2000
Alcuin 735–804
Sibawayhi 760–795
Dante 1265–1321
Sejong 1397–1450
Nebrija1441–1522
Richelieu 1585–1642
Catherine II 1729–1796
Koraïs 1748–1833
J. Grimm 1785–1863
Zamenhof 1859–1917
Ueda 1867–1937
M. K.Gandhi 1869–1948
Lenin 1870–1924
Atatürk 1881–1938
Alisjahbana 1908–1994
Senghor 1906–2001
Introduction
xxii
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Chapter 1
Alcuin of York
Alcuin’s life
T
he name of Alcuin of York, Ealhwine, or Albinus in Latin,
is associated with consequential developments of Europe’s
intellectual history, summarily known as the Carolingian
Renaissance, which involved language reform as a key element.
Alcuin was born sometime between 730 and 735 CE in York,
where he grew up and lived the better part of his life. At the time
York’s bishop had been granted archiepiscopal status, and the
city was beginning to acquire a reputation as a place of learning
centred on the cathedral school, founded by Irish missionaries, as
its most important institution. Alcuin’s family was of noble
lineage, and it was a matter of course that he would be educated
among the sons of other nobles at this school. A diligent and
gifted student, Alcuin rose to fame which eventually drew him
away from his native Northumbria.
Alcuin of York
Alcuin was a pious man and may have been a monk of the
Benedictine Order, although this has never been established.
He had a strong penchant for scholarship, and as a student he
attracted the attention of Albert, the master of the school. When
Albert became Archbishop of York, Alcuin succeeded him as
head of the school and remained so for about fifteen years. As an
emissary of the Archbishop he was sent to Rome and other places
on the Continent several times, and it is believed that on such an
occasion he must have met Prince Charles, son of Pepin the
Short, who was impressed by his erudition. After Pepin’s death
in 768, Charles ruled the Frankish kingdom together with his
brother Carloman; he became sole sovereign over the Franks
after Carloman’s death in 771.
Charles, who would become Charlemagne, had ambitious
plans to unite the Germanic peoples into a Christian kingdom.
He allied himself with the Pope in Rome and worked tirelessly,
and ruthlessly, to civilize the German tribes and establish a
Catholic empire, as distinct from the Orthodox world of Eastern
Christianity (Brown 2003). Although constantly on the move,
waging war against the uncouth Saxons and other infidels wher-
ever they were, Charles maintained his court in Aachen, where he
spent more time than in most other places and from where
administrative and educational strategies were coordinated. He
recruited scholars from far and wide for the Palace School there.
In 781, when Alcuin was in his late forties and stood in high
repute as a scholar, King Ælfwald of Northumbria sent him with
an embassy to Rome, and on his return journey he visited
Charles at Parma. The Christian monarch needed an able man
to supervise the training of teachers and missionaries at his
Palace School, and persuaded Alcuin to join his court in Aachen
as Master of the school. Thus, Alcuin moved from York to
2
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Alcuin of York
4
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Alcuin of York
Language reform
The spread of Latin in the wake of Roman garrisons and Chris-
tianization had been remarkable, but in the long run it proved
difficult to maintain standards among populations that used
other languages in their daily pursuits. Even churchmen often
lacked elementary training. In a famous episode, Boniface—who
was born and educated in the monastery of Exeter but as leader
of the Anglo-Saxon Benedictine mission spent most of his life
in Frankia and was made Archbishop with jurisdiction over
German lands by Pope Gregory III—witnessed a Bavarian priest
performing a baptism in around 745. To Boniface’s consterna-
tion the priest used the words baptizo te in nomine patria et filia
et spiritus sancti, instead of the correct formula in nomine patris
et filii. Since Boniface found grammatical ignorance morally
reprehensible and ‘the mother of all error’ (Irvine 1994: 303),
5
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Alcuin of York
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