This chapter examines how the modernisation of Arabic was conceptualised in the ALA discourse in line with a persistent dyad of both an exogenous and endogenous understanding of modernisation. From an instrumental perspective, Arabic was perceived to be challenged by the incompatibility between an inherited linguistic tradition and an imported linguistic modernity, making the status of Arabic perilous in the modern Arabic-speaking world. From the symbolic perspective, as a marker of the Arab nation, Arabic was believed to exemplify the modern predicaments of the Arab nation, which was thought to be caught between continuing stagnation from within, and unremitting colonial and imperial threats from without. Modernising Arabic therefore became a language planning project always directed at a national cause. The reconciliation of tradition and modernity for Arabic was, in fact, part of the search of the Arab national self in new sociopolitical circumstances, emerging and evolving from the late eighteenth century, to counterbalance the hegemony of the powerful Other, mainly the West.

Modernity and Modernisation between Self and the Other

Broadly speaking, modernity means different things or has different meanings to Westerners and Arabs. For Westerners, modernity refers to the overall social features that distinguish ‘a traditional, agrarian past from the modern, industrial present’ (Bhambra 2007: 1). This modernity is a product of interrelated, deep processes unfolding from the sixteenth century onwards in the West, including: (1) secularisation – ‘a process by which the overarching and transcendent religious system of old is reduced in modern functionally differentiated societies to a subsystem alongside other subsystems’ (Dobbelaere 2007: 4148); (2) differentiation – a process by which the life world (the ontological physical and social world) and knowledge (epistemology) are divided into relatively independent functional subsystems and are managed on matching bases; and (3) rationalisation – the rise of instrumental rationality which transfers social authority from traditional, often religious, forms, to objective, rational calculations managed by human beings based on their social needs and common welfare.

Linguistic modernity in the West was also a phenomenon correlating with these three processes. Secularisation involved liberating knowledge and education from ecclesiastical authority – a process facilitated by replacing Latin with various national languages based on which mass literacy and public education could be promoted. These national languages were standardised and simplified to ensure they were equally accessible to both literary elites and the common people.