[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Spanish  grave , Saxon, High Dutch  Belgic and the Teutonic tongues
were natively  hoarse and  rough (Lemon 1783: vi). Given the poor
choice on offer, who would not choose a language  as lofty and manly, as
those are truly brave who speak it ? (Buchanan 1757: xvi). The language,
reflecting the nation, was surely worth the price of renouncing
regionalisms, provincialisms, vulgarisms, dialects, and all those other
forms of heteroglot difference. For  as England is the Land of Liberty, so is
her Language the Voice of Freedom (Lemon 1783:vii). Compared to this the
other languages of Britain could only appear inferior and restrictive:  And
how can the greatest wit find clear and fit words in a language that hath
them not? What orations could Tully or Demosthenes have made in
Welsh? (Wilson 1724:36).
English then was the language which would unite the nation and serve
its interests:  it will answer the honest ends of life, and we may live, and
fight, and trade with it as it is (ibid.: 25). Fighting and trading were
certainly the ways of the British empire, and it is unsurprising to find that
the identification of a postulated national identity with the language, and
vice versa, extends to the nation s colonial activities too. English, wrote
Sheridan, should be rendered easy  to all inhabitants of His Majesty s
dominions, whether of South or North Britain, of Ireland, or the other
British Dependencies (Sheridan 1780:i). The language, if properly cared
for and refined, could act in the same manner as the classical languages, as
the vehicle for the civilising mission of colonialism:
Were we as industrious in improving and cultivating our language, as
the Greeks and Romans were& we might have as learned Leaders and
Commanders both by sea and land as they had who by their Learning,
Civility and Eloquence in their mother tongue, inlarged their
Dominions no less than by their arms: The barbarous Nations being, as
it were, ambitious to be conquered by such brave and generous
enemies, who fought rather to subdue their barbarity, and civilise their
Manners, than to enslave their Persons, or ruin their Countries& . And
since it pleas d God to convey Christianity into the Isle of Great
72 Wars of words
Britain, on the wings of these learned languages, which are now dead,
ought not the British Christians, in a grateful sense of such goodness, to
polish, refine and enrich their living language with all excellent
knowledge, were it for no other end but to carry the Christian religion
to other barbarous and wretched nations, who for want of Learning
and Virtue, are but a kind of more savage beasts?
(Lane 1700:xix)
Here is the colonial fantasy captured in an image of language some tweny
years before Defoe fictionalised it. In Defoe s version, one of the
barbarous nation,  Friday , is indeed ambitious to be conquered, and given
language, by such a brave and generous man as Crusoe. He places his
head willingly under Crusoe s foot and is immediately taught words from
the language of civility and eloquence:  first, I made him know his name
should be Friday, which was the day I saved his life; I called him so for the
memory of the time; I then taught him to say  Master , and then let him
know that was to be my name (Defoe 1972:206). Crusoe says  name of
course, when he means social position. Until civilised by the gift of the
English language, Friday is as an infant (in fans, without speech), and can
only offer thanks by means of dumb signs:
When he espied me, he came running to me, laying himself down again
upon the ground, with all the possible signs of an humble, thankful
disposition, making a many antic gestures to show it.
(ibid.: 206)
For the purposes of colonialism, the slave had to be brought to speak his
master s language, thus gaining what Lane had termed  Learning and
Virtue . Or, as Crusoe puts it, in rather more stark words:
I was greatly delighted with him, and made it my business to teach him
everything that was proper to make him useful, handy, and helpful; but
especially to make him speak and understand me when I spoke.
(ibid.: 210)
In this section we have tried to further the analysis which we began by
looking at Swift s Proposal. Swift s reading of linguistic history as indicative
of the nation s past has been extended here to demonstrate how the
English language was used to represent, and help create, the nation s sense
of its identity. Its function was not merely to act as an agent of unification
for the nation, but to evince national superiority by the very nature of its
language. English speakers were made to feel that they shared in
something of genuine value each time they opened their mouths or raised
their pens. For this was not merely an imagined community, but an
imagined community of superiority. However, the phrase  opened their
mouths or raised their pens should give us pause for thought. For not all
Wars of words 73
British subjects were literate, and in our next section we will address the
question of whether this community was quite as linguistically equal as it
was represented. By considering at the level of language the constitution of
what Habermas (1989) called the bourgeois public sphere, we will start to
see how both language and history were heavily stratified; how forms of
heteroglossia of various sorts were to be banished or silenced, proscribed
and prescribed.
THE BOURGEOIS LINGUISTIC SPHERE
The story of the emergence of the bourgeois public sphere rendered by
Habermas, though subject to a good deal of revision, is still a useful
historical and sociological account of the social developments of our
period. In his history, Habermas identifies the appearance of the bourgeois
public sphere in Britian as the result of the confrontation between the
absolutist state and the newly emergent bourgeois class. In Britain the new
deal ushered in by the Glorious Revolution of 1688 confirmed the
restriction of the independent power of the monarchy and the consolidated
status of the newly visible class. The historical settlement, characterised
principally by the increased economic and political power of the
bourgeoisie, had the effect of engendering a new form of discursive
organisation in British society, the bourgeois public sphere. In opposition
to the authoritarian politics of France and we have seen how
contemporary English writers on language responded to that model the
bourgeois public sphere was the space in which free, bourgeois subjects
met and conversed, exercising their rationality and judgment. Its
institutions were the coffee houses, the periodicals and journals, and the
gentlemen s clubs, sites where consensual and polite rational discussion
took place for mutual benefit. As Swift put it,
To discourse, and to attend, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]