Hostname: page-component-77c78cf97d-cfh4f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-04-27T05:08:37.338Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

That Which Is Casually Called a Language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Robert J. C. Young  and
Emmanuel Bruno Jean-François
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

How do we know where languages begin and where they end? It is widely assumed that languages exist as discrete, distinct entities, an idea that forms the basis of mono- and multilingualism, as well as of source and target languages in translation theory. What created that clear-cut division between languages? I argue that our current conception of language was invented as part of the process of the creation of the nation-state. The idea of a language, and therefore of translation, was a product of nation-state formation that required the construction of boundaries to divide homogeneous territories, peoples, and their languages. The Stammbaum model of linguistic filiation emerged as part of the same politicized ideology of modernity. Against this, I consider the alternative model of language mixture, which conceptualizes language as a transformative process of interaction without boundaries and challenges ideas of a language and of translation.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 131 , Issue 5: Special Topic: Literature in the World , October 2016 , pp. 1207 - 1221
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2016

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.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Works Cited

About Languoids. Edited by Harald Hammarström et al., Glottolog 2.7, glottolog.org/glottolog/glottologinformation#top.Google Scholar
Adamska-Salaciak, Arleta. “Jan Baudouin de Courtenay's Contribution to Linguistic Theory.” Historiographical Linguistica, vol. 25, nos. 1-2, 1998, pp. 25–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, Benedict. Imaginary Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. Verso, 1983.Google Scholar
Balibar, Étienne. “What Is a Border?” Translated by Chris Turner. Politics and the Other Scene, translated by Jones, Christine et al., Verso, 2002, pp. 75–86.Google Scholar
Barnard, F. M. “The Hebraic Roots of Herder's Nationalism.” Herder on Nationality, Humanity, and History, McGill-Queen's UP, 2003, pp. 17–37.Google Scholar
Bassnett, Susan, and Trivedi, Harish. “Introduction: Of Colonies, Cannibals and Vernaculars.” Post-colonial Translation: Theory and Practice, edited by Bassnett, and Trivedi, , Routledge, 1999, pp. 1–18.Google Scholar
Bauman, Richard, and Briggs, Charles L. Voices of Modernity: Language Ideologies and the Politics of Inequality. Cambridge UP, 2003.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. “Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers.” Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 4, part 1, Suhrkamp Verlag, 1972, pp. 9–21.Google Scholar
The Bible: Authorized King James Version. edited by Carroll, Robert and Prickett, Stephen, Oxford UP, 1997.Google Scholar
Cassin, Barbara. Vocabulaire européen des philosophies: Dictionnaire des intraduisibles. Éditions du Seuil, 2004.Google Scholar
Cohn, Bernard. Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge. Princeton UP, 1996.Google Scholar
“Confound.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, 2015, www.oed.com/view/Entry/38962?redirectedFrom=confound#eid.Google Scholar
Dann, Otto. “The Invention of National Languages.” Unity and Diversity in European Culture, c. 1800, edited by Blanning, Tim and Schulze, Hagen, Oxford UP, 2006, pp. 121–34. Proceedings of the British Academy.Google Scholar
Das Gupta, Jyotirindra. Language Conflict and National Development: Group Politics and National Language Policy in India. U of California P, 1970.Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Félix. Capitalisme et schizophrénie 2: Mille plateaux. Éditions de Minuit, 1980.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. Le monolinguisme de l'autre, ou la prothèse d'origine. Éditions Galilée, 1996.Google Scholar
“Dialect.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, 2015, www.oed.com/view/Entry/51878?rskey=xi6fM5&result=1&isAdvanced=false#eid.Google Scholar
Fanon, Frantz. Peau noire, masques blancs. Éditions du Seuil, 1952.Google Scholar
“Features in PMLA.” PMLA, vol. 129, no. 4, Oct. 2014, pp. 614–16.Google Scholar
François, Alexandre. “Trees, Waves and Linkages: Models of Language Diversification.” The Routledge Handbook of Historical Linguistics, edited by Bowern, Claire and Evans, Bethwyn, Routledge, 2014, pp. 161–89.Google Scholar
Gasparov, Boris. “The Ideological Principles of Prague School Phonology.” Language, Poetry and Poetics, edited by Pomorska, Krystyna et al., Mouton de Gruyter, 1987, pp. 49–78.Google Scholar
Grierson, G. A. “Languages.” The Indian Empire, Descriptive, new ed., Clarendon Press, 1909, pp. 349–401. Vol. 1 of The Imperial Gazetteer of India.Google Scholar
Grierson, G. A., editor. Linguistic Survey of India. Calcutta, Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1903-22.Google Scholar
Hall, Robert A. Jr. “Language, Dialect and ‘Regional Italian.‘” International Journal of the Sociology of Language, vol. 25, 1980, pp. 95–106.Google Scholar
Harris, Roy. “On Redefining Linguistics.” Redefining Linguistics, edited by Davis, Hayley G. and Taylor, Talbot J., Routledge, 1990, pp. 18–52.Google Scholar
Hobsbawm, E. J. Nations and Nationalism since 1870: Programme, Myth, Reality. Cambridge UP, 1990.Google Scholar
Hobsbawm, E. J., and Ranger, Terence, editors. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge UP, 1983.Google Scholar
Joseph, John E. Language and Identity: National, Ethnic, Religious. Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Joseph, John E. Saussure. Oxford UP, 2012.Google Scholar
Joyce, James. Finnegans Wake. Viking Press, 1958.Google Scholar
Kaviraj, Sudipta. The Imaginary Institution of India: Politics and Ideas. Columbia UP, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kothari, Rita. “Caste in a Casteless Language? English as a Language of ‘Dalit’ Expression.” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 48, no. 39, 2013, pp. 60–68.Google Scholar
Kothari, Rita. Memories and Movements: Borders and Communities in Banni, Kutch, Gujarat. New Delhi, Orient Blackswan, 2013.Google Scholar
Kothari, Rita. “Names Are for Other People's Languages.” Agency and Patronage in Eastern Translatology, edited by Ankit, Ahmed and Faiq, Said, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015, pp. 111–26.Google Scholar
Makoni, Sinfree, and Pennycook, Alastair. “Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages.” Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages, edited by Makoni, and Pennycook, , Multilingual Matters, 2007, pp. 1–41.Google Scholar
The People's Linguistic Survey of India. Bhasha Research and Publication Centre, www.peopleslinguisticsurvey.org.Google Scholar
Rahman, Tariq. Language and Politics in Pakistan. Lahore, Oxford UP, 1997.Google Scholar
Richards, Robert J. “The Linguistic Creation of Man: Charles Darwin, August Schleicher, Ernest Haeckel, and the Missing Link in Nineteenth-Century Evolutionary Theory.” Experimenting in Tongues: Studies in Science and in Language, edited by Dörries, Matthias, Stanford UP, 2002, pp. 21–48.Google Scholar
Romaine, Suzanne. Pidgin and Creole Languages. Routledge, 1988.Google Scholar
Sakai, Naoki. “How Do We Count a Language? Translation and Discontinuity.” Translation Studies, vol. 2, no. 1, 2009, pp. 71–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salmons, Joseph. A History of German. Oxford UP, 2012.Google Scholar
Sander, Ruth. German: Biography of a Language. Oxford UP, 2010.Google Scholar
Saussure, Ferdinand de. Course in General Linguistics. edited by Bally, Charles and Sechehaye, Albert, translated by Baskin, Wade, Philosophical Library, 1959.Google Scholar
Schleicher, August. “Die ersten Spaltungen des indogermanischen Urvolkes.” Allgemeine Zeitung fuer Wissenschaft und Literatur, Sept. 1853, pp. 786–87.Google Scholar
Sériot, Patrick. Les langues ne sont pas des choses: Discours sur la langue et souffrance identitaire en Europe centrale et orientale. Éditions Pétra, 2010.Google Scholar
Sériot, Patrick, editor. Un paradigme perdu: La linguistique marriste. U de Lausanne, 2005. Cahiers de l'ILSL 20.Google Scholar
Stankiewicz, Edward, editor and translator. A Baudouin de Courtenay Anthology: The Beginnings of Structural Linguistics. Indiana UP, 1972.Google Scholar
Steiner, George. After Babel: Language and Translation. Oxford UP, 1975.Google Scholar
Summary by World Area. Ethnologue, www.ethnologue.com/statistics.Google Scholar
Tamburelli, Marco. “Uncovering the ‘Hidden’ Multilingualism of Europe: An Italian Case Study.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, vol. 35, no. 3, 2014, pp. 252–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, Nicholas. Colonialism's Culture: Anthropology, Travel and Government. Polity, 1994.Google Scholar
Trubetzkoy, N. S. “The Legacy of Genghis Khan” and Other Essays on Russia's Identity. edited by Liberman, Anatoly, Michigan Slavic Publications, 1991.Google Scholar
Voloshinov, V. N. Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. 1929. Translated by Ladislav Matejka and I. R. Titunik, Seminar Press, 1973.Google Scholar
Yildiz, Yasemin. Beyond the Mother Tongue: The Post-monolingual Condition. Fordham UP, 2014.Google Scholar
Young, Robert J. C. Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Culture, Theory and Race. Routledge, 1995.Google Scholar
Young, Robert J. C. “Race and Language in the Two Saussures.” Philosophies of Race and Ethnicity, edited by Osborne, Peter and Sandford, Stella, Continuum Books, 2002, pp. 63–78, 183-85.Google Scholar
Young, Robert J. C. “Sir William Jones and the Translation of Law in India.” Reading the Legal Case: Cross-currents between Law and Humanities, edited by Wan, Marco, Routledge, 2012, pp. 80–89.Google Scholar