Professional Documents
Culture Documents
445-449
International
PragmaticsAssociation
DOI: 10.1075/prag.2.3.08gal
SusanGal
1.Idea,practice, power
such ideas, in which the stakesare jobs, and other material advantages.Collins and
Heller are particularly precise in describingdebatesamong different groups who are
in a position to define a broad socialreality,as well as the responsesof thosewho must
collude and calculate with or resist that reality. Schieffelin and Doucet show that
debates about Haitian orthography not only divide the experts, but create/define
constituenciesamong different fractionsof the Haitian elite. Literary people, school
teachers and parents bent on upward mobility for their children defend the pro-
etymology position, and are opposedby those in governmentagenciesworking for adult
literacy. This study, along with Errington's discussion of debates among Javanese
intellectualsand politiciansabout the refigurationof the Javaneselanguage,bear on
my next point.
of communal spirit and the uniformity of language is important not for efficient
communicationand broad participationbut as proof that the speakingsubject is an
authenticmember of the nation, linking speaker and languageto the past and its
(invented)traditions.Different moral and aestheticissuesare involved in each case.
In both of these well known conceptionsthere is a logic of boundednessthat
invitesus to imagine - against the ubiquitous evidenceof variation in languageand
society- the happy fusion of a circumscribedand internallyhomogeneouslanguagewith
a similarlyconfigurednation. There are certainlyother cultural relationsbetween state
and subjects,for instanceone typical of state-socialistsocieties.Any suchrelation, like
"nation,"and in common with other categoriesof political theory and practice,such as
"the people,""the masses,""the public" includesimplicit assumptionsabout language
that deserveexploration.Notice too, that both ideasof the nation can be evoked in the
samecountry, can be used by minorities,indigenouspopulationsor competingelites
to constitutethemselvesand argue with each other. Claims to the national self are
madenot only to internal audiencesbut to other nations,and as Errington showsfor
Indonesia,are involved in handling complexrelationsto internationalcapital.
The implicit logics I have outlined form the backgroundto the more specific
discursivebattles described in these papers. What part of the population is really
Haitian and what standardizedwritten or spoken languagewill representthem? One
versionof Catalan is to be the authenticone, but which current speakerswill be able
to understandit? Why make Javanese- with its levelsof social differentiation - into
an internallyhomogeneousethnic language?
In the courseof highlightingthe multiplicityof linguisticideologies- as ideasand
practice- these papers begin two further and related tasks: 1. to understand the
semioticprocessesby which chunks of linguisticmaterial (".g. orthographic systems,
archaicvs. new forms) gain significanceas representationsof particular parts of
populations;2. to unravel the semioticand rhetoricalmeansby which our own expert
theoriesas well as everyday and political argumentslink together such apparently
diverseculturalcategoriesaslanguage,spelling,nation,gender,simplicity,intentionality,
authenticity,development,tradition.